PREFACES 


PREFACES 


BY 

DON  MARQUIS 

AUTHOR  OF  "HERMIONE,"  ETC. 


DECORATIONS    BY 
TONY   SARG 


D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  LONDON 

1919 


/>*- 


COPYRIGHT,  igiQ,  BY 

D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT,  IQl8,  BY 
THE  SUN  PRINTING  AND  PUBLISHING  ASSOCIATION 


PRINTED  IN  THE   UNITED  STATES   OF   AMERICA 


TO 

MY  SISTERS 
MINERVA  VIRGINIA  MARQUIS 

AND 
BERNICE  MAUDE  MARQUIS 

THIS  BOOK  IS  AFFECTIONATELY 
DEDICATED 


424608 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFACE  TO  A  BOOK  OF  LITERARY  REMINIS 
CENCES   .  ,  .  . .     ....     •     •     •  ..•••••  3 

PREFACE  TO  A  COOK  BOOK   .     ,   <  .   , ,     .     .  *3 

PREFACE  TO  A  BOOK  OF  FISHHOOKS      ...  23 

PREFACE  TO  A  BOOK  OF  CIGARETTE  PAPERS    .  39 

PREFACE  TO  THE  PLAYS  OF  EURIPIDES  ...  47 

PREFACE  TO  A  CAT  SHOW  CATALOGUE  ...  57 

PREFACE  TO  THE  PROSPECTUS  OF  A  CLUB  .     .  63 

PREFACE  TO  A  MEDIUM'S  DOPE  BOOK  .     .     >  73 

PREFACE  TO  A  TREATISE  ON  A  NEW  ART   .     .  81 

PREFACE  TO  A  MEMORANDUM  BOOK      .     «     .  91 

PREFACE  TO  A  HANGMAN'S  DIARY   .     .     .     .  IQ3 

PREFACE  TO  A  VOLUME  OF  POETRY  .     .     .     •  IJI 

PREFACE  TO  OLD  DOCTOR  GUMPH'S  ALMANAC  121 

PREFACE  TO  A  BOOK  OF  PARAGRAPHS    ...  129 

PREFACE  TO  A  BOOK  OF  PATTERNS  .      .      .      .  J37 

PREFACE  TO  THE  WORKS  OF  BILLY  SUNDAY     .  H5 

PREFACE  TO  A  CALENDAR 


Vll 


Contents 


PAGE 

PREFACE  TO  A  STUDY  OF  THE  CURRENT  STAGE  161 

PREFACE  TO  A  BOOK  OF  SAFETY  PINS   .      .      .  167 

PREFACE  TO  THE  NOVELS  OF  HAROLD  BELL 

WRIGHT 175 

PREFACE  TO  A  BOOK  OF  STATISTICS       .     .     .  183 

PREFACE  TO  A  MORAL  BOOK  OF  ARITHMETIC  .  193 

PREFACE  TO  A  BOOK  WITHHELD      ....  203 

PREFACE  TO  HOYT'S  RULES  .     ...     .     .  213 

PREFACE  TO  THE  DIARY  OF  A  FAILURE       .     .  221 

FOREWORD  TO  A  LITERARY  CENSOR'S  AUTO 
BIOGRAPHY 229 

NOTE  TO  A  CHAPTER  ON  JOURNALISM  .     ,     .  239 

FOREWORD  TO  A  MISER'S  AUTOBIOGRAPHY.      .  247 

PREFACE  TO  A  CHECK  BOOK       .     .     .     .     .  255 

PREFACE  TO  THE  AUTOBIOGRAPHY  OF  AN  OLD- 
FASHIONED  ANARCHIST     .     .     .     •     •     .  263 

PREFACE  TO  AN  UNPUBLISHED  VOLUME     .     .  271 

PREFACE  TO  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES  ....  281 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Literary 
Reminiscences 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Literary 
Reminiscences 

THEY  are  tearing  the  old  chop  house  down — 
the  Eheu  Fugaces  chop  house — to  build  on  its 
site  a  commercial  enterprise,  a  sordid  publishing 
house.  ...  So  passes  another  literary  land 
mark;  mere  business  triumphs  again  over  the 
Arts. 

It  was  in  1850  that  Jack  Whittier  first 
brought  me  in  to  dinner  there.  Jolly  Jack  Whit- 
tier!  There  was  a  wit  and  a  true  Bohemian 
for  you  1  His  quickness  at  a  repartee  was  mar 
velous.  Mike  Cervantes  was  drinking  in  the 
bar  as  we  passed  through. 

"Hello,  Jack,"  hiccoughed  Mike,  "been  snow- 
bounding  lately?" 


"No,"  said  Whittier,  with  a  sidelong  look  at 
Mike's  glass,  "nor  skating  either." 

"Ralphie  Emerson  has  more  humor,"  Ollie 
Holmes  used  to  say,  "but,  after  all,  Whittier  is 
wittier!" 

Eheu  Fugaces,  the  proprietor,  had  a  flavor 
of  his  own.  "Wines  aren't  what  they  were," 
he  was  forever  saying.  "Nor  Bourbons  either," 
he  added  one  day,  glancing  at  Hal  Bourbon, 
afterward  King  of  France  as  Henri  Quatre,  but 
just  then  in  exile  and  down  on  his  luck. 

Bourbon  was  a  lean  fellow  and  rather  black 
guardly;  he  used  to  sit  all  day  when  he  had  had 
a  bit  of  good  fortune  eating  buckwheat  cakes 
soaked  in  olive  oil  and  molasses,  with  caraway 
seeds  sprinkled  over  them.  .  .  .  "Georgie," 
he  would  say  to  our  favorite  waiter,  George 
Moore,  "I  miss  something  in  you  that  I  feel 
you  should  have,  but  I  am  not  sure  just  what 
it  is.  Could  it  be  pimples?" 

Georgie  Moore  was  forever  trying  to  write; 
he  used  to  hang  about  the  tables  and  listen  when 
the  grown  men  told  racy  stories  and  would 
spend  his  leisure  time  writing  them  down  as  if 

4 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Literary  Reminiscences 

he  himself  had  been  the  hero  of  them.  I  never 
heard  him  say  anything  but  "Chacun  a  son 
gout!"  except  once,  and  then,  seeing  Frankie 
Bret  Harte  about  to  fall  to  hungrily  upon  an 
Irish  stew  into  which  Georgie  himself  had  slyly 
slipped  a  cockroach,  he  varied  it  with  "Chacun 
a  son  ragout!" 

Eheu  Fugaces'  place  was  the  home  of  the 
jeu  de  mot.  .  .  .  "Disraeli,"  said  Walt  Whit 
man  one  afternoon  as  we  were  sipping  our 
toddies,  "your  wit  makes  me  positively  giddy!" 
"Me,  too,"  said  Beaconsfield,  "it's  my  wit  that 
makes  me  Dizzy!"  And  then  he  added,  after 
reflecting  for  only  a  moment  or  two,  "Walt, 
I  am  a  jeu  de  mot" 

How  New  York  changes !  In  those  days  the 
Battery  was  far  uptown,  and  as  for  Bowling 
Green — well,  Bowling  Green  was  in  Yon- 
kers.  ...  It  was  Felicia  Hemans,  I  think,  who 
created  a  sensation  one  evening  by  asking  N.  P. 
Willis — (or  maybe  it  was  Nat  Wills;  it  was 
either  Nat  Wills  or  Nat  Willis)— "What  is  a 
Yonker?"  .  .  .  The  moty  however,  has  been 
attributed  to  Jane  Taylor,  who  used  often  to 

5 


Prefaces 


come  to  dinner  with  Jane  Austen  and  Fenimore 
Cooper. 

The  Two  Janes,  we  called  them.  Dear 
Janes  I  I  wonder  if  there  is  another  man  alive 
who  remembers  the  night  Jane  Taylor  and 
Jane  Austen  recited  in  unison  "The  Face  on  the 
Barroom  Floor"  while  Nero  played  chords  on 
his  ukelele?  .  .  .  Eheu  Fugaces,  the  pro 
prietor,  used  to  say,  "The  new  Janes  aren't 
what  the  old  Janes  were!" 

Shakespeare  was  tending  bar  in  the  place  at 
the  time,  but  he  was  never  quite  one  of  us. 
Eddie  Poe  would  snort  and  remark:  "Shake 
speare!  He  is  self-consciously  imitating  what 
John  Masefield  did  because  Masefield  needed 
a  job,  that  is  what  he  is  doing!  Deliberately 
and  affectedly  pseudojohnmasefielding!"  I 
think  we  all  felt  a  little  that  way  about  him — 
that  he  was  there  to  study  the  place  and  pick 
up  local  color,  in  his  sharp  way,  with  an  eye  to 
using  it  later.  But  Colley  Gibber  took  him  up, 
and  later  the  Frohmans  patronized  the  man,  and 
I  hear  that  he  is  finally  on  his  way  toward  real 
success  and  a  try-out  in  the  movies.  His  verse 

6 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Literary  Reminiscences 

was  always  a  little  too  dressy  for  my  liking; 
but,  as  Georgie  Moore  liked  to  murmur: 
"Chacun  a  son  gout!" 

Ah!  the  gay  parties!  The  old  days!  The 
present  generation  does  not  know  what  Bo 
hemia  was!  There  are  certain  mechanical 
imitators,  and  imitations — but  the  esprit. 
Where  is  ly  esprit?  Where  is  Bohemia?  Where, 
for  that  matter,  is  I' empire  des  lettresf  Where  ? 
It  is  enough  to  make  les  larmes-aux  yeux!  .  .  . 
At  that  time  there  were  fish  in  the  Aquarium, 
just  as  there  are  to-day — but,  naturally,  fish 
with  a  difference.  Roaring  Hank  Longfellow 
and  I,  one  night,  coming  in  rather  elevated, 
I  must  confess,  after  a  gay  party  in  Bushwick 
(now  a  part  of  Brooklyn),  where  Felicia  He- 
mans  had  recited  some  of  her  own  poems,  as 
well  as  "Lasca"  and  "Curfew  Shall  Not  Ring 
To-night!" — Hank  and  I  somewhat  boister 
ously  demanded  grilled  goldfish  of  old  Eheu 
Fugaces.  Eheu  referred  us  in  his  ironical  way 
to  the  Aquarium.  "Well,"  cried  Hank  Long 
fellow,  who  fairly  bubbled  with  wit  at  all 
times,  "there's  as  good  fish  in  the  Aquarium 


Prefaces 


as  have  ever  been  caught  I"  "There's  no  such 
thing,"  said  Eheu  Fugaces.  "Fish  aren't  what 
they  were  in  Jonah's  day  at  all." 

But  Hank  and  I  were  off.  It  must  have  been 
a  very  gay  party  in  Bushwick,  for  we  wound  up 
at  the  Hippodrome  instead  of  the  Aquarium, 
and  seined  from  a  tank  a  young  woman,  whose 
name  I  forget — she  was  the  Annette  Keller- 
mann  of  that  day — whom  we  brought  back  to 
Eheu's  place  with  a  demand  that  she  be  grilled 
at  once.  .  .  .  "Let  her  be  stewed!"  shouted 
Wash  Irving,  wag  that  he  was. 

Swinburne  was  there  that  evening;  Theodore 
Watts-Dunton  used  to  bring  him  in  for  a  few 
minutes  now  and  then,  shackled,  and  let  him 
have  a  cup  of  cambric  tea  through  a  straw. 
The  straw  was  necessary,  as  Watts-Dunton 
kept  him  muzzled  for  fear  he  would  suddenly 
begin  declaiming  some  of  his  own  more  sensu 
ous  poetry,  and  the  shackles  were  to  prevent 
him  writing.  When  Jane  Taylor,  Jane  Austen, 
Millard  Fillmore  and  the  young  woman  from 
the  Hippodrome  tank  flung  themselves  into  an 
impromptu  dance — the  Two  Janes  displaying 

8 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Literary  Reminiscences 

a  quarter  of  an  inch  of  comely,  clocked  stocking 
beneath  their  flowing  pantalettes — Swinburne 
became  excited  and  began  to  jingle  his  shackles. 
But  Teddy  Watts-Dunton  dragged  the  old 
gentleman  away,  screaming  and  pulling  back 
against  his  chain,  and  passionately  trampling 
the  cup  which  had  contained  the  cambric  tea. 

Queen  Victoria  I  never  saw  at  Eheu's  chop 
house,  but  Gladstone  and  Lincoln,  both  always 
wearing  neatly  polished  boots,  and  both  with 
heavy  gold  watch  chains  with  seals  dangling 
from  them,  often  dropped  in  arm  in  arm. 

I  remember  Lincoln  regarding  little  Billy- 
Cul  Bryant  quizzically  as  Billy  sat  in  the  upper 
part  of  the  icebox,  unconsciously  crushing  a 
consignment  of  ripe  tomatoes,  writing  "Than- 
atopsis."  "Read  it  aloud,  Billy-Cul,"  said 
Abie.  And  when  Billy-Cul  had  done  so  Abie 
remarked  humorously:  "It's  got  some  awful 
good  words  in  it,  Billy-Cul,  but  what's  it  all 
about?" 

But  this  was  only  affectation  on  Abie's  part; 
he  really  liked  "Thanatopsis,"  and  had  caught 
the  drift  of  it  at  once;  when  he  thought  Glad- 

9 


Prefaces 


stone  was  not  looking  he  allowed  his  face  to 
become  very  sad  and  furrowed  again  and 
fumbled  with  his  seals  and  wiped  away  a 
tear.  .  .  . 

The  dear  old  icebox!  That,  too,  will  be 
dismantled,  I  suppose,  or  scalded  out,  at  least, 
and  the  zinc  lining  will  lose  its  patina — that 
patina  of  which  Geordie  Moore  used  to  say, 
as  he  ran  his  critical  thumb  nail  over  it,  "Chacun 
a  son  gout!"  .  .  .  Eheu  Fugaces  and  his  merry 
crew.  ...  I  knew  them  well!  I  knew  them 
When! 


Preface  to  a  Cook  Book 


Preface  to  a  Cook  Book 

AN  elderly  gentleman  who  found  me  a  bore 
once  asked  me  desperately,  "Are  you  fond  of 
literature?'1 

"I  dote  upon  it,"  I  said. 

He  was  a  painter;  we  had  met  at  a  kind  of 
tea  where  every  one  was  talking  of  art  and 
literature  and  things  like  that;  we  hated  each 
other  at  once  because  each  had  been  told  that 
the  other  was  interesting. 

"Oh,  you  dote  on  it  I"  he  said,  after  a  moment 
of  venomous  silence. 

"I  do!"  I  replied  firmly. 

He  sneered;  it  was  evident  that  he  wished  me 
to  understand  that  he  was  incredulous. 

"Sir,"  I  said,  striving  with  all  the  rancor  of 
my  nature  to  be  offensive,  "sir,  are  you  fond  of 
literature?" 

13 


Prefaces 


"I  am,"  he  said,  putting  on  a  pair  of  eye 
glasses,  and  looking  as  if  he  might  look  like 
Whistler  if  he  thought  me  worth  wasting  the 
look  on. 

"What  sort  of  literature  are  you  fond  of?" 
I  asked. 

"I  am  fond  of  Lord  Tennyson's  Poems,"  he 
retorted  insultingly. 

I  permitted  myself  a  faint,  superior  smile. 
It  maddened  him,  as  I  intended  it  should;  his 
nose  turned  a  whitish  blue  as  the  blood  receded 
from  his  face. 

"Did  you  ever  read  any  of  Meredith?"  I 
asked. 

"I  did!"  he  replied. 

I  turned  toward  the  fireplace,  as  if  willing  to 
veil  a  doubt. 

He  took  off  his  glasses;  he  pointed  at  me  a 
long,  bony  digit  that  trembled  with  anger. 

"Did;yo«?" 

"Yes,"  I  said. 

"What?"  he  demanded. 

"For  one  thing,"  I  told  him,  "  The  Egoist.'  " 

I  dwelt  upon  The  Egoist  as  if  I  tasted  a 
14 


Preface  to  a  Cook  Book 


subtle,  ulterior  jest  in  mentioning  it  to  him. 
I  hoped  that  would  puzzle  him. 

"One  of  Meredith's  lesser  known  pieces,  no 
doubt,"  he  said. 

"Oh,  no  1"  I  affirmed. 

"Not  so  well  known  as  'Lucile,'  "  he  asserted. 

"'Lucile'?" 

"What — you  do  not  mean  that  you  have 
never  read  Owen  Meredith's  masterpiece, 
'Lucile'!" 

"Owen!"  I  gasped;  but  before  I  could  do 
more  than  gasp  he  quoted : 

'  We  may  live  without  poetry,  music  or  art, 

We  may  live  without  conscience,  and  live  with 
out  heart, 

We  may  live  without  friends,  we  may  live  with* 
out  books; 

But  civilized  man  cannot  live  without  cooks.9 " 

The  next  instant  our  hostess  was  upon  us, 
murmuring  with  a  bright,  arch  smile:  "Ah! 
Locksley  Hall!  Those  old  Victorian  things 
were  wonderful  in  their  way,  after  all  ... 
were  they  not?  I  knew  you  two  dear  men 
15 


Prefaces 


would  be  just  simply  wild  about  each  other  I" 
.  .  .  She  was  that  sort  of  hostess. 

Those  lines  were  printed  in  blue  and  gold, 
with  a  red  border  around  them,  in  the  front  of 
a  Cook  Book  that  was  one  of  my  grandmother's 
wedding  presents.  Above  them  was  the  pic 
ture  of  an  ample  and  dimpled  young  woman  in 
a  white  apron,  who  was  smiling  and  mixing 
something  in  a  bowl.  I  cannot  remember  the 
time  when  I  was  not  aware  that  this  young 
woman's  name  was  Dorcas.  No  one  ever  told 
me  that  her  name  was  Dorcas,  but  the  knowl 
edge  somehow  came  to  me  while  I  was  still 
in  kilts,  and  it  is  as  Dorcas  that  I  think  of  her 
to  this  day. 

One  glanced  at  her  and  knew  at  once  the  sort 
of  things  that  Dorcas  would  cook,  that  Dorcas 
was  born  to  cook.  Never,  in  later  life,  have  I 
sat  down  to  dinner  without  saying  to  myself, 
"Ah!  things  look  Dorcassy  to-night  I"  or, 
"Alas!  there  is  nothing  Dorcassy  here." 

Do  not  mistake  me;  my  affection  for  Dorcas 
was  (and  is)  based  upon  nothing  so  simple  as 
her  air  of  bucolic  wholesomeness.  I  am  no  ad- 
16 


Preface  to  a  Cook  Book 


vocate  of  plain  cooking.  Dorcas  was  not  a 
Plain  Cook.  She  was  the  mistress  of  seven  hun 
dred  complications,  and  in  them  she  rejoiced. 
If  there  was  an  apparent  simplicity  in  the  re 
sult,  that  appearance  proceeded  from  the  ex 
cellent  art  of  Dorcas  which  subdued  many  in 
gredients  to  a  delicious  unison.  For  she  was 
an  artist. 

But  she  was  not  a  scientist.  Dorcas  had 
never  studied  culinary  chemistry.  If  you  had 
tried  to  talk  seriously  to  Dorcas  about  her  gas 
tric  juices  she  would  have  been  as  shocked  as 
if  you  had  mentioned  her  legs.  Dorcas  cooked 
for  the  sight  and  smell  and  soul  and  palate  of 
Man;  his  digestion  did  the  best  it  could.  She 
betrayed  Man's  duodenum,  and  he  loved  her 
for  it. 

And  suppose  the  richness  of  Dorcas  did  ruin 
one's  digestion.  What  then?  Is  the  digestion 
a  god  that  we  should  regard  it  reverently?  To 
my  mind  there  is  something  base  in  considering 
one's  digestion  as  if  it  were  one  of  the  higher 
attributes.  I  like  to  see  a  reckless,  adventurous, 
headstrong,  romantic,  dashing  sort  of  eater.  I 
17 


Prefaces 


like  the  vaunting  spirit  that  proclaims,  "By 
heaven,  I  will  conquer  that  plum  pudding  or 
die  I'7 

Let  us  be  sensible  about  this  thing.  .  .  .  An 
Average  Man  may  eat  the  Dorcas  Cooking 
from  infancy  on  to  the  age  of  forty  years  be 
fore  he  becomes  an  incurable  dyspeptic.  Sup 
pose,  then,  he  must  retire  to  poached  eggs  and 
malted  milk — what  memories  he  has  to  look 
back  upon! 

I  once  had  a  second  cousin,  a  prudent  boy, 
who  thought  a  great  deal  of  his  digestion;  Dor 
cas  could  not  tempt  him;  he  knew  all  about  his 
alimentary  canal  and  gave  himself  as  many 
airs  as  a  bumptious  young  anchorite  who  has 
just  donned  his  first  hair  shirt.  He  exasper 
ated  me;  if  he  had  been  deliberately  saving 
his  digestion  for  the  first  thirty-five  years  of 
life  in  order  to  enjoy  it  to  the  full  and  with 
more  mature  discrimination  during  the  latter 
thirty-five  I  could  have  understood  him.  But 
no — he  intended  to  eat  poached  eggs  and  malted 
milk  to  the  frugal  end. 

But  the  universe  is  not  on  the  side  of  frugal- 
18 


Preface  to  a  Cook  Book 


ity;  the  stars  were  hurled  broadcast  from  the 
hand  of  a  spendthrift  God.  .  .  .  Cousin  Tom, 
going  back  to  his  office  after  a  lunch  of  oatmeal 
crackers  on  his  twenty-eighth  birthday,  was 
killed  by  a  brick  which  fell  from  the  chimney 
of  a  chop  house  in  which  I  sat  eating  a  steak 
en  casserole  with  mushrooms  and  thinking  sen 
timentally  of  Dorcas.  He  died  without  issue, 
and  carried  his  gastric  juices  unimpaired  to  the 
grave.  In  a  way  I  took  a  certain  satisfaction 
in  his  death,  as  it  proved  the  folly  of  prudence; 
and  yet  I  wept  at  the  funeral,  for  the  thought 
struck  me,  "What  could  I  not  do  with  Tom's 
practically  virgin  digestive  organs  if  he  had  but 
contrived  to  leave  them  to  me!" 

There  was  a  stomach  that  had  never  really 
lived  .  .  .  and  now  it  never  would! 

It  is  better  to  go  swaggering  through  the 
gates  of  life  loose-lipped  and  genial  and  greedy, 
embracing  pleasures  and  suffering  pains,  than 
to  find  one's  self,  in  the  midst  of  caution,  in 
continently  slain  by  chance  and  eaten  by  worms. 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Fishhooks 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Fishhooks 

THIS  little  book  of  flies  and  hooks  and  guts 
and  hackles,  which  was  presented  to  us  by  a 
friend  who  heard  us  say  we  liked  to  go  fishing 
— we  may  as  well  admit  at  once  that  it  is  full 
of  riddles  we  cannot  rede.  We  know  nothing 
about  trout,  and  have  no  great  ambition  to 
learn.  Fishing  for  trout  has  too  much  exer 
tion  and  bodily  effort  about  it  to  be  attractive. 
One  tramps  about  over  rough  country  and  gets 
one's  self  wet  in  cold  water,  and  tangles  one's 
hook  in  one's  hair  and  ears,  and  all  that  sort 
of  thing. 

Our  idea  of  fishing  is  to  put  all  the  exertion 
up  to  the  fish.  If  they  are  ambitious  we  will 
catch  them.  If  they  are  not,  let  them  go  about 
their  business.  If  a  fish  expects  to  be  caught 
by  us  he  has  to  look  alive.  We  give  him  his 
23 


Prefaces 


opportunity,  and  he  must  make  the  most  of  it. 

Most  of  our  fishing,  and  the  only  fishing  we 
ever  really  enjoyed,  was  done  with  a  worm,  a 
hook,  a  leaden  sinker,  a  line  and  a  willow  pole. 
We  wouldn't  know  what  to  do  with  a  reel.  We 
expect  a  fish  to  eat  the  hook  very  thoroughly, 
to  persist  until  he  gets  it  well  down  and  then 
to  signal  us  that  all  is  well  by  pulling  the  float 
under  water;  a  reel  is  superfluous;  one  flips 
the  pole  over  one's  head  and  the  fish  lands 
somewhere  in  the  bushes  behind. 

A  little  quiet  river  or  a  creek,  with  low  banks 
and  plenty  of  big  trees  along  the  banks,  is  the 
only  place  to  fish ;  and  the  fish  should  be  mostly 
bullheads.  Bullheads  know  their  business;  they 
hook  themselves  more  completely  and  compe 
tently  than  any  other  fish.  A  bullhead  will 
swallow  the  worm,  the  hook,  and  the  lead 
sinker,  a  part  of  the  line,  and  then  grumble  be 
cause  he  hasn't  been  able  to  eat  the  float  and 
the  pole.  And  you  can  leave  it  all  up  to  him. 
You  can  sit  in  the  shade  and  watch  the  float 
bobbing  and  jerking  about  in  the  serene  con 
sciousness  that  he  will  do  a  good  job.  When 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Fishhooks 

he  pulls  the  pole  itself  out  of  the  socket  of 
earth  into  which  you  have  jabbed  the  butt  end 
of  it,  then  is  the  time  to  interfere  and  bring 
him  to  land.  Don't  hold  the  pole  yourself;  it 
is  too  much  trouble. 

Being  out  of  the  water  doesn't  make  much 
difference  to  the  average  bullhead.  We  don't 
suppose  he  could  stand  it  more  than  two  or 
three  days,  unless  there  was  a  damp  wind  blow 
ing,  but  a  few  hours  more  or  less  are  nothing 
to  him.  After  having  eaten  as  much  of  your 
fishing  tackle  as  you  will  permit  him  to  have 
before  interfering,  you  might  think  that  he 
would  be  a  little  dejected.  But  not  so.  You 
go  to  take  the  hook  out  of  him,  and  he  rushes 
at  you  and  horns  you,  with  a  queer  purring 
noise,  and  shows  every  disposition  to  fight  it 
out  on  land. 

And  he  seldom  knows  when  he  is  dead.  Of 
ten  in  the  course  of  a  day  we  have  caught  a 
bushel  or  so  of  bullheads  and  thrown  them  into 
the  back  of  the  buggy  and  driven  home  with 
them,  five  or  six  miles,  maybe.  Arrived  at 
home  we  would  find  them  stiff  and  caked  with 
25 


Prefaces 


dried  mud  and  dust,  and  to  all  appearances 
dead,  having  been  out  of  the  water  and  jog 
ging  along  in  the  hot  afternoon  sun  for  a  couple 
of  hours.  But  throw  them  into  a  barrel  of 
water,  and  in  a  few  minutes  they  were  swimming 
around  as  if  nothing  had  happened,  grinning 
over  the  top  of  the  barrel  and  begging  for 
more  worms  and  hooks  and  lead  sinkers.  Re 
freshed  by  his  cool  plunge,  the  beast  was  ready 
for  another  romp.  The  bullhead  is  not  a  beau 
tiful  fish,  and  has  no  claims  to  aristocracy,  but 
he  is  enduring. 

We  never  liked  to  fish  from  a  boat.  You 
have  to  row  the  thing  about,  and  that  is  a  lot 
of  trouble.  Select  a  big,  shady  tree  that  bends 
over  a  pool  in  some  little  inland  stream  and 
lie  down  under  the  tree,  and  lie  there  all  day 
and  fish  and  eat  and  smoke  and  chew  tobacco 
and  watch  the  dragonflies  and  spit  into  the 
water.  If  you  feel  like  swimming,  a  little,  all 
right — it  doesn't  particularly  bother  the  bull 
heads.  But  it  is  a  mistake  to  go  to  sleep. 

If  you  go  to  sleep  while  you  are  loafing,  how 
are  you  going  to  know  you  are  loafing?  And 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Fishhooks 

if  you  don't  know  it,  what  satisfaction  is  there 
in  it?  And  it  is  also  a  mistake  to  think  too 
deeply.  If  you  do  that,  about  the  time  you 
begin  to  get  on  the  track  of  the  secret  of  the 
universe  some  fool  fish  will  hook  himself,  and 
you  will  have  to  attend  to  him. 

Lie  with  your  hat  over  your  face  and  watch 
thoughts  carefully  from  under  the  brim  of  it 
as  they  come  toward  you  out  of  the  woods  or 
up  the  creek.  And  if  a  thought  that  seems  as 
if  it  were  going  to  be  too  profound  or  trouble 
some  tries  to  crawl  up  on  you  shoo  it  away  and 
wait  for  an  easy  thought.  And  when  you  get  an 
easy  thought  hold  on  to  it  and  think  it  for  a 
long  time  and  enjoy  it. 

The  best  thoughts  to  have  when  you  are  fish 
ing  are  the  thoughts  about  what  you  would  do 
if  you  had  a  million  dollars.  After  a  while  you 
get  sort  of  lenient  toward  the  world,  and  un 
ambitious,  and  think  it's  a  little  selfish  of  you 
to  want  a  whole  million,  and  say  "Shucks!  I'd 
be  willing  to  take  a  hundred  thousand!"  And 
you  think  maybe  if  you  roused  up  a  little  and 
looked  over  the  edge  of  the  bank  you  would 
27 


Prefaces 


see  a  streak  of  gold  in  the  soil,  and  then  you 
would  go  and  buy  that  land  of  the  farmer  that 
owns  it  and  get  rich  off  of  the  gold.  And  then 
you  remember  that  you  don't  know  who  owns 
the  land  and  it  would  be  considerable  trouble 
to  have  to  ask  questions  around  and  find  out. 
So  it  doesn't  seem  worth  while  to  look  over  the 
edge  of  the  bank  and  see  whether  the  gold  is 
there  after  all.  And,  anyhow,  would  it  be  fair, 
to  whatever  farmer  owns  the  land,  to  buy  it 
knowing  there  was  gold  on  it  and  never  tell 
him?  And  what  would  you  buy  it  with?  If 
you  borrowed  money  to  buy  it  with  the  fellow 
you  borrowed  the  money  from  would  likely  get 
the  biggest  part  of  it,  and  you  would  have  all 
your  work  and  worry  for  nothing,  and  so  you 
don't  look  to  see  if  the  gold  is  there.  And 
then  you  get  to  thinking  that  probably  there 
aren't  many  people  honest  enough  to  pass  up  a 
fortune  like  that  just  simply  because  somebody 
else  owns  it  and  you  admire  yourself  for  being 
that  honest. 

You  can  find  more  things  to  admire  yourself 
for,  lying  around  fishing  like  that,  if  you  pick 
28 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Fishhooks 

your  thoughts  properly.     Everybody  ought  to 
do  it  all  the  time  and  not  work  at  anything  else. 

Several  friends  and  literary  advisers  to  whom 
we  have  shown  the  foregoing  preface  have  taken 
the  trouble  to  intimate  that  they  do  not  be 
lieve  what  we  have  said  concerning  the  fish 
known  as  the  bullhead;  namely,  that  he  can  live 
out  of  water  for  several  hours.  This  only 
shows  how  little  some  people  know  about  bull 
heads.  We  might  have  told  a  story  of  a  par 
ticular  bullhead  far  more  incredible,  and  equally 
true,  but  that  we  are  aware  of  this  general  lack 
of  exact  information  concerning  bullheads  and 
did  not  care  to  have  our  statements  questioned 
by  the  ignorant. 

This  particular  bullhead  we  caught  and 
tamed  when  we  were  about  twelve  years  old, 
and  named  him  Mr.  Hoskins  because  of  his 
facial  resemblance  to  a  neighbor.  Mr.  Hos 
kins — not  the  fish,  but  the  fish's  godfather — 
had  fallen  from  a  windmill  in  youth,  upon  his 
head,  and  his  head  had  been  getting  larger  ever 
since,  until  he  seemed  all  head,  with  a  few 
29 


Prefaces 


wiry  spikes  of  beard  and  mustache  around  his 
mouth.  His  intellect  had  not  grown  as  his 
head  grew;  the  poor  man  used  to  go  about  call 
ing  attention  to  his  large  head,  saying:  "I  fell 
off  a  windmill  and  the  hogs  ate  me,  all  but  my 
head — see  my  head!"  He  was  pathetically 
proud  of  it.  The  fish  looked  like  him,  and  with 
the  heedless  cruelty  of  boyhood  we  named  the 
bullhead  Mr.  Hoskins. 

Mr.  Hoskins  (the  fish)  dwelt  in  an  old  wash 
boiler  under  a  maple  tree.  And  it  was  be 
neath  this  maple  tree  that  we  used  to  feed  all 
our  other  animals  every  morning — a  black  dog, 
a  crow,  a  black  and  orange  cat,  a  brown  dog 
called  Gustavus  Adolphus  after  the  Terrible 
Swede  of  that  name  and  an  owl  known  (for  we 
had  been  reading  Dumas)  as  the  Duchess  de 
Montpensier.  At  that  time,  and  in  that  place, 
the  village  butcher  would  give  one  a  whole 
basketful  of  scraps  and  bones  for  a  dime;  the 
dogs,  the  cat,  the  crow  and  the  Duchess  would 
range  themselves,  solemnly  expectant,  in  a  row 
under  the  maple  tree  and  catch  the  bits  of  meat 
we  tossed  to  them  in  their  mouths  or  beaks, 

80 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Fishhooks 

no  animal  stepping  out  of  his  or  her  place  in 
line  and  no  animal  offering  to  bite  or  peck  its 
neighbor. 

Mr.  HoskinSj  the  bullhead,  would  come  to 
the  surface  of  the  water  and  peer  with  one  eye 
over  the  rim  of  the  boiler,  watching  these  pro 
ceedings  closely.  At  first  he  watched  them 
grouchily,  we  thought.  A  bullhead,  however, 
is  somewhat  handicapped  in  the  expression  of 
the  lighter  and  gayer  emotions;  his  face  is  so 
constructed  that  even  if  he  feels  otherwise  than 
gloomy  and  ill-humored  he  cannot  show  it.  But 
as  the  spring  wore  into  summer  it  seemed  to  us 
that  Mr.  Hoskins  was  getting  friendlier,  some 
how.  One  day  we  tossed  him  a  piece  of  meat 
and  he  snapped  at  it.  After  that  we  ranged 
the  other  beasts  in  a  circle  around  the  wash 
boiler,  and  if  Gustavus  Adolphus  or  the  Duchess 
de  Montpensier  missed  a  piece  of  meat  it  fell 
to  Mr.  Hoskins.  In  ten  days  Mr.  Hoskins 
could  catch  as  well  as  any  of  them. 

One  morning  we  were  alarmed  to  see  that 
Mr.  Hoskins's  boiler  had  been  overturned  dur 
ing  the  night,  no  doubt  by  some  thirsty  cow.  He 
31 


Prefaces 


seemed  dead  when  we  picked  him  up  and  we 
dug  a  hole  in  the  ground  and  threw  him  into 
it.  But  before  we  had  him  covered  a  sudden 
summer  rain  came  up  and  we  sought  shelter. 
It  was  a  drenching  rain;  when  it  was  over, 
a  couple  of  hours  later,  we  returned  to  Mr. 
Hoskins  to  find  the  hole  filled  with  water  and 
him  flopping  around  in  it.  He  was  evidently 
feeling  quite  chipper,  and  was  contentedly  eat 
ing  an  angleworm. 

We  put  him  back  in  his  boiler.*  And  then 
we  began  to  experiment  with  Mr.  Hoskins. 
If  he  could  live  out  of  water  for  two  or 
three  hours,  why  not  for  a  whole  day?  Every 
morning  we  took  him  from  his  boiler  at  a  cer 
tain  time,  and  each  day  we  kept  him  from  the 
water  ten  minutes  or  so  longer  than  the  day 
preceding.  By  September  he  was  able  to  go 
from  seven  in  the  morning  until  eight  in  the 
evening  entirely  out  of  water  without  suffering 
any  apparent  ill  effects  except  a  slight  loss  in 
weight.  At  first  during  the  hours  when  he  was 

*  The  star  marks  the  exact  spot  at  which  the  more  skep 
tical  sort  of  person  will  likely  cease  to  believe. 

32 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Fishhooks 

out  of  water  he  would  seem  rather  torpid,  in 
fact  almost  comatose.  But  by  giving  him  fre 
quent  cool  drinks  from  a  bottle  with  a  quill  in 
it  we  found  that  he  became  livelier.  By  autumn 
he  could  go  until  sunset  on  not  more  than  two 
drinks  of  water. 

He  became  a  jollier  companion,  joining,  so 
far  as  he  was  able,  ourself  and  the  other  ani 
mals  in  all  our  sports.  One  of  the  most  pleas 
ant  recollections  of  our  boyhood  is  the  mem 
ory  of  Mr.  Hoskins  flopping  genially  about  the 
garden  while  Gustavus  Adolphus  and  the  other 
dog  dug  angleworms  for  Mr.  Hoskins  and  the 
crow. 

When  the  chilly  weather  came  in  November 
we  moved  his  wash  boiler  into  the  house  and 
set  it  behind  the  kitchen  range,  as  we  did  not 
care  to  run  the  risk  of  having  him  frozen.  But 
with  the  cold  weather  his  need  for  water  grew 
less  and  less;  he  began  to  manifest  something 
like  pride  in  his  ability  to  do  without  it;  it  was 
in  January  that  he  began  to  experience,  or  at 
least  to  affect,  a  repugnance  toward  being  in 
water  at  all.  Then  we  substituted  for  the  boiler 
33 


Prefaces 


a  box  full  of  sawdust.  Still,  however,  even  dur 
ing  January  he  would  sometimes  awake  during 
the  night  and  cry  for  a  drink,  and  we  insisted  on 
a  weekly  bath. 

At  seven  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  St.  Val 
entine's  Day,  1890,  we  went  into  the  kitchen 
and  found  that  Mr.  Hoskins  had  leaped  from 
the  floor  to  the  hearth  of  the  kitchen  range,  and 
had  succeeded  in  working  himself  in  among  the 
warm  ashes.  He  had  felt  cold  during  the  night. 
After  that  we  always  put  him  to  bed  with  a 
hot  water  bottle,  and  we  remember  well  his 
cries  of  peevishness  and  discomfort  on  the 
night  when  the  stopper  came  out  of  the  bottle 
and  drenched  him. 

We  linger  over  these  last  days  of  February, 
hesitating  to  go  on,  because  they  were  the  last 
days  in  Mr.  Hoskins's  life.  It  was  on  Febru 
ary  28  that  he  went  out  of  doors  for  the  first 
time  that  year.  Some  one  had  left  the  cistern 
uncovered  and  he  fell  in.  We  heard  his  cries. 
We  put  a  ladder  down  and  plucked  him  from 
the  black  water.  But  it  was  too  late.  If  he 
had  only  remembered  how  to  swim,  if  we  had 
34 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Fishhooks 

only  had  the  presence  of  mind  to  fling  down  a 
plank  to  him  he  might  have  kept  himself  afloat 
until  we  reached  him  with  the  ladder.  But  it 
was  too  late.  We  suppose  that  when  he  felt 
himself  in  the  water  a  panic  struck  him.  Those 
were  days  before  every  family  had  a  pulmotor. 
We  worked  over  him,  but  it  was  no  use.  It  is 
silly  perhaps  to  feel  so  badly  over  a  little  ani 
mal  like  that,  but  from  that  day  to  this  we 
have  never  eaten  a  bullhead. 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Cigarette 
Papers 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Cigarette  Papers 

ONE  of  our  youthful  ambitions  was  to  be  able 
to  sit  astride  a  horse,  governing  his  action  with 
one  hand  while  with  the  other  we  nonchalantly 
rolled  a  cigarette.  We  have  never  known  but 
two  people  who  could  do  it.  One  of  them  was 
employed  by  a  show,  and  we  always  suspected 
that  there  was  an  understanding,  a  gentlemen's 
agreement,  between  the  horse  and  him;  per 
haps  he  bribed  the  animal  outright.  The  other 
was  a  genuine  cowboy  who  had  gone  to  the  real 
West  from  the  little  middle  western  country 
town  where  we  lived  more  than  thirty  years 
ago  and  who  liked  to  come  back  "East"  for  a 
few  weeks  every  two  or  three  years  and  ex- 
39 


Prefaces 


hibit  tricks  of  the  sort  before  an  admiring 
crowd  of  former  friends  and  neighbors.  His 
name  was  Buck  Something-or-Other. 

No  doubt  among  his  fellow  range  riders  a 
few  hundred  miles  to  the  west  Buck  was  com 
monplace  enough,  but  to  our  tame  Illinois  vil 
lage,  where  nothing  ever  happened,  Buck  was 
a  figure  of  romance.  He  was  a  being  from 
another  world,  a  link  between  the  paper  cov 
ered  novels  which  we  read  and  real  life.  Per 
haps  he  knew  it  and  enjoyed  being  just  that; 
he  was  a  picturesque  and  facile  liar;  likely  he 
read  the  paper  covered  novels  too  and  was  con 
sciously  striving  to  suggest  their  heroes — a  thing 
he  could  get  away  with  much  more  readily  in 
Illinois  than  in  the  West,  we  suppose. 

At  any  rate  it  was  from  Buck  that  we  gained 
our  original  impression  that  there  was  some 
thing  rather  elegant  and  dashing  and  pictur 
esque  and  knowing  about  the  cigarette.  We 
never  did  learn  to  roll  them  with  one  hand, 
either  on  a  horse  or  off  of  one ;  to  this  day  it  is 
all  we  can  do  to  roll  one  that  will  hang  to 
gether,  seated  securely  in  an  armchair  and  us- 
40 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Cigarette  Papers 

ing  all  our  fingers  and  thumbs,  and  we  have 
more  thumbs  than  any  one  else  we  know  when 
it  comes  to  a  business  of  that  sort. 

The  mind  of  youth  is  "wax  to  receive  and 
marble  to  retain,"  as  a  friend  of  ours  once 
quoted  while  observing  a  family  of  six  children, 
all  below  the  age  of  ten,  being  dragged  through 
the  horror  chamber  of  the  Eden  Musee.  And 
there  still  dwells  within  us  the  feeling  that  the 
rolled  cigarette  belongs  of  right  to  such  inter 
esting  creatures  as  adventurers  and  revolution 
ists  and  poets. 

We  had  been  a  worshiper  of  Stevenson  for 
some  time  before  we  learned  that  he  was  ad 
dicted  to  them,  and  when  we  learned  it  the  cir 
cumstance  naturally  confirmed  our  feeling.  Per 
sonally  we  do  not  enjoy  smoking  them;  we  do 
not  get  any  physical  satisfaction  out  of  them; 
this  is  due,  no  doubt,  to  the  fact  that  we  learned 
to  smoke  a  corncob  pipe  crammed  with  the  very 
rankest  and  blackest  tobaccc  at  an  early  age, 
and  no  cigarette  means  anything  to  us  unless 
we  chew  it  as  a  goat  or  a  deer  chews  them. 

But  it  is  the  grosser  and  more  material  side 
41 


Prefaces 


of  our  nature  which  finds  the  cigarette  too  feeble 
and  pallid;  all  that  is  romantic  and  literary  and 
spiritual  in  us  holds  by  the  cigarette.  When  we 
die  and  are  purged  of  all  the  heavy  flesh  that 
holds  us  down,  our  soul,  we  hope,  will  roll  and 
smoke  cigarettes  along  with  Buck  the  Romantic 
and  lying  cowboy  and  Ariel  and  Stevenson 
and  Benvenuto  Cellini  and  Jack  Hamlin.  We 
have  never  been  the  person  on  earth  we  should 
like  to  be;  circumstances  have  always  tied  us 
to  the  staid  and  commonplace  and  respectable; 
but  when  we  become  an  angel  we  hope  to  be 
right  devilish  at  times.  And  that  is  an  idea 
that  some  one  should  work  out — Hell  as  a  place 
of  reward  for  Purtians.  But  it  is  possible  that 
that  elderly  Mephistopheles,  with  the  smack  of 
a  canting  Calvinistic  archangel  about  him,  Ber 
nard  Shaw,  has  already  done  so  somewhere. 

Where  the  idea  that  the  cigarette  is  more 
injurious  than  tobacco  taken  in  any  other  form 
originated  we  cannot  imagine.  It  seems  to  us, 
looking  back  and  looking  round  on  all  the 
smokers  we  have  known  and  know,  to  be  gro 
tesquely  untrue.  But  we  believed  it  firmly  in 

42 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Cigarette  Papers 

our  youth;  it  added  a  spice  of  deviltry  to  the 
idea  of  cigarette^  smoking  which  made  it  ten 
times  more  attractive.  We  dare  say  that  scores 
of  thousands,  and  perhaps  millions,  of  Amer 
ican  boys  have  taken  to  cigarette  smoking  sim 
ply  because  they  thought  it  more  reckless  than 
smoking  cigars  or  pipes.  The  moralists  man 
aged  to  invest  it  for  them  with  a  mysterious 
tradition  of  depravity;  and  so,  quite  naturally, 
having  arrived  at  a  certain  age,  they  took  to 
it  enthusiastically.  It  has  probably  been  a  good 
thing  for  them;  it  has  kept  them  away  from 
too  much  pipe  and  cigar  smoking.  If  we  had 
been  encouraged  by  some  farsighted  elder  re 
lation  to  take  to  cigarettes  at  the  age  of  ten  we 
should  not  be  the  physically  ruinous  thing,  the 
anemic,  pipe-shattered  wreck,  that  we  are  to 
day.  But,  as  we  have  said,  the  mild  things  give 
us  no  sensation  unless  we  eat  them;  and  now 
it  is  too  late  for  us  to  reform  and  take  them  up. 


Preface  to  the  Plays  of 
Euripides 


Preface  to  the  Plays  of  Euripides 

WE  approach  a  preface  to  the  plays  of  Eurip 
ides  with  more  confidence  than  we  could  sum 
mon  to  the  critical  consideration  of  any  other 
Greek  dramatist.  We  know  more  about  Eurip 
ides.  We  have  read  more  of  him.  We  once 
read  five  lines  of  him  in  the  original  Greek. 
It  is  true  that  we  did  not  know  what  they  were 
about  when  we  read  them,  and  should  not  know 
now;  but  we  read  them  thirty  or  forty  times 
and  something  about  the  manner  in  which  we 
read  them  saved  a  man's  life. 

We  were  fussing  around  the  office  of  the  At 
lanta   (Ga.)   Journal  one  morning  about  three 
o'clock,  having  just  finished  writing  an  editorial 
which   we    thought   would   likely   elect    Hoke 
47 


Prefaces 


Smith  governor,  if  he  were  able  to  live  up  to  it, 
when  we  ran  across  a  copy  of  "Iphigenia  in 
Tauris."  It  was  a  new  edition,  and  some  trust 
ing  publisher  had  sent  it  along  in  the  vain  hope 
that  it  would  be  noticed.  We  happened  to 
know  the  alphabet  and  could  mispronounce  a 
few  words,  and  we  turned  over  the  pages  wish 
ing  that  we  were  able  to  read  the  thing — it 
might  give  us  a  chance  to  elevate  our  mind, 
which  was  suffering  from  the  frightful  strain  of 
writing  about  Hoke  Smith  in  such  a  way  that 
even  Hoke  would  believe  himself  a  statesman. 
And  thinking  how  great  a  man  Euripides  prob 
ably  was,  for  all  we  knew,  and  how  superior  to 
Hoke  Smith  he  must  have  been  in  many  ways, 
we  got  very  hungry. 

We  went  across  the  street  to  a  little  basement 
lunchroom  kept  by  a  fellow  named  George  Ste- 
fanopoulous,  who  always  put  so  much  onion  in 
his  Hamburger  steaks  one  could  not  taste  the 
beef.  If  one  poured  enough  Worcestershire 
sauce  over  them  so  that  one  could  not  taste  the 
onions  they  could  be  eaten.  We  carried  Eu 
ripides  with  us,  and  George  told  us  proudly  that 

48 


Preface  to  the  Plays  of  Euripides 

there  is  no  more  difference  between  the  Greek 
of  Euripides  and  the  Greek  written  and  spoken 
in  Athens  to-day  than  between  the  English  of 
Shakespeare's  time  and  the  English  of  to-day. 
Inquiry  revealed  that  George's  knowledge  of 
Shakespeare  was  about  as  extensive  as  our 
knowledge  of  Euripides,  and  so  we  cannot  vouch 
for  his  statement. 

Interrupting  our  course  in  Euripides — some 
one  or  some  thing  has  been  interrupting  us  all 
our  life  every  time  we  seemed  to  be  on  the  point 
of  really  getting  into  the  classics — in  came  a 
young  man  named  Henry. 

Henry  roomed  with  us,  and  roamed  with  us 
at  that  time,  and  he  was  a  chronic  sufferer  'from 
false  angina  pectoris.  This  is  a  disease  (un 
known  to  Euripides,  but  Alcibiades  undoubtedly 
developed  it)  which  has  all  the  effects  upon  pa 
tient  and  observer  of  real  organic  affection  of 
the  heart;  no  one  takes  it  lightly  but  the  doc 
tors.  In  Henry's  case  it  was  aggravated  by  a 
fondness  for  Georgia  corn  whisky  and  stuff  he 
ate  out  of  tin  cans.  This  diet  did  things  to  his 
stomach;  his  stomach  kicked  to  his  pneumo- 
49 


Prefaces 


gastric  nerve,  and  his  pneumogastric  nerve 
gripped  his  heart  as  with  iron  claws,  squeezed 
it  to  the  size  of  a  peanut,  twisted  it  like  a  foun 
tain  pen  that  won't  unscrew  and  convinced  it 
that  it  would  never  beat  again.  The  chief  dif 
ference  between  real  angina  and  pseudo  angina 
(as  far  as  we  can  gather  from  Euripides)  is 
that  while  both  can  kill  you,  the  real  sort  kills 
you  more  quickly  and  kindly. 

Henry  pulled  a  spasm  of  it  while  George 
was  telling  us  about  Euripides;  writhed  about, 
and  fell  to  the  floor  semi-conscious. 

Heat,  applied  to  the  heart,  and  strychnine 
or  aromatic  ammonia,  if  you  can  get  hold  of 
them,  are  (as  ^Esculapius  would  say)  "indi 
cated." 

So  we  sen4:  George's  assistant  to  telephone 
for  a  doctor  and  applied  a  hot  Hamburger 
steak,  just  out  of  George's  frying  pan,  to 
Henry's  bosom. 

We  had  frequently  helped  Henry  die  with 
his  heart,  but  this  time  we  were  alarmed. 

"George,"  said  we,  "throw  another  Ham 
burger  steak  into  the  skillet  at  once.  His  pulse 

50 


Preface  to  the  Plays  of  Euripides 

has  stopped  entirely.     And  this  steak  is  cool 
ing." 

Just  then  Henry's  eyes  fluttered  and  he  strove 
to  speak.  We  bent  over  the  sufferer. 

"I'm  dying,"  murmured  Henry.  "Pray! 
Pray  for  me  1" 

The  request  caught  us  unaware ;  we  could  not 
remember  any  formal  petition.  In  desperation 
we  took  up  Euripides,  and,  as  the  second  Ham 
burger  steak  went  hot  and  sizzling  and  drip 
ping  with  grease  from  George's  frying-pan  to 
Henry's  heart,  we  began  to  chant  one  of  the 
choruses. 

There  was  something  about  a  Basileon  in  it, 
whatever  a  Basileon  may  be  ... 

"Thank  you!"  muttered  Henry  .  .  . 

The  third  steak  was  getting  cool,  and  still 
George's  assistant  did  not  return  with  a  doctor. 
Henry's  chest  was  cooling,  too.  His  feet  and 
hands  were  cold.  He  had  no  more  pulse  than 
a  wooden  Indian  or  one  of  the  iron  dogs  in 
Hoke  Smith's  front  yard.  If  we  had  known 
a  real  prayer  we  would  have  switched  to  it  from 
Basileon  .  .  . 

51 


Prefaces 


And  just  as  we  were  putting  Basileon  over  the 
jumps  for  the  eighteenth  time  George  Stefano- 
poulous  announced: 

"Sir,  I  have  no  more  Hamburger  steak  to 
fry!" 

"My  God!"  said  we,  "Basileon— Basileon— 
dig  up  something  else — Basileon — Basileon — 
fry  an  egg,  George — Basileon — Basileon — and 
be  quick  about  it !  Fry  two  eggs !" 

It  was  at  the  sixteenth  egg  that  the  physician 
arrived  and  complimented  us  on  our  treatment. 

"Heat,"  he  said,  "is  the  great  thing  in  these 
cases,  and  it  is  well  to  remove  all  apprehension 
from  the  patient's  mind  if  possible."  "The 
prayer,"  said  Henry,  who  had  been  hypoder- 
micked  into  something  like  an  appetite  for  corn 
whisky  and  tin  cans  again,  "the  prayer  is  what 
saved  me!" 

Euripides  did  not  live  as  long  as  Sophocles, 
but  was,  on  the  whole,  more  widely  popular. 
And  one  has  only  to  compare  the  "Iphigenia" 
of  Euripides  with  the  "Agamemnon"  of 
^Eschylus  to  see  their  entire  dissimilarity.  They 
are  products  of  practically  the  same  period  of 
52 


Preface  to  the  Plays  of  Euripides 

Hellenic  culture  .  .  .  and  yet,  what  a  differ 
ence! 

Henry  married,  Hoke  Smith  in  the  Senate, 
Euripides  dead — how  time  flies ! 


Preface  to  a  Cat  Show 
Catalogue 


Preface  to  a  Cat  Show  Catalogue 

THE  feline  animals  described  and  pictured  in 
this  catalog  are,  doubtless,  the  aristocrats  of 
their  species.  But  I  know  a  yellow  cat,  lean 
and  wicked,  and  with  the  voice  of  a  lost  soul 
crying  out  its  woes  across  some  black  abyss  of 
nether  night,  who  could  whip  any  dozen  of 
them.  He  has  the  courage  of  Ajax. 

For  years  1  have  been  more  or  less  bothered 
by  the  summer  cat.  He  comes — he  and  she 
come — in  earnest  couples,  in  tragic  trios,  to 
stage  desperate  operas  of  war  and  love  beneath 
my  chamber  window.  I  have  flung  old  boots, 
electric  light  bulbs,  Christmas  presents,  and 
corncob  pipes  at  them,  without  effect.  Sixteen 
volumes  of  the  works  of  the  English  poets,  full 
of  typographical  errors  and  notes  by  pedantic 
gentlemen  kindly  interpreting  the  poets'  mean- 


Prefaces 


ings  better  than  they  could  themselves,  went 
after  the  boots  and  pipes,  but  the  felines  al 
ways  returned.  Once  I  thought  I  had  perma 
nently  discouraged  one  with  Wordsworth's 
"Excursion,"  but  he  was  back  in  forty-eight 
hours;  he  had  only  been  hit  by  the  book — he 
could  not  read  it. 

About  three  months  ago  I  had  what  I  thought 
was  a  great  idea.  I  bought  an  electric  pocket- 
flasher,  such  as  are  carried  by  watchmen  and 
stage  burglars  and  the  detectives  created  by 
popular  illustrators  of  magazine  stories.  The 
next  time  the  alley  orchestra  tuned  up  I  flashed 
the  light  out  of  my  window  upon  the  musicians. 
They  couldn't  stand  it.  Cat  after  cat  would 
catch  it  in  his  eyes,  try  to  stare  it  down  for  a 
couple  of  minutes,  and  then  suddenly  turn  and 
slink  off.  They  love  the  darkness,  for  their 
ways  are  evil. 

But  about  three  weeks  ago  the  yellow  demon 
mentioned  above  made  his  entrance  into  the 
alley,  and  as  he  came  he  sang.  He  is  a  cat  with 
a  bitter  melancholia,  with  a  profound,  pessimis 
tic  sense  of  the  uselessness  of  existence;  and  his 

58 


Preface  to  a  Cat  Show  Catalogue 

hatred  of  the  cosmos  which  he  is  forced  to  in 
habit  is  the  motive  of  his  song;  he  is  a  cat  with 
a  strong,  black,  bad,  unbroken  heart,  who 
loathes  life. 

I  gave  him  the  ilash  in  his  eyes,  and  he 
stopped  singing,  startled.  But  did  he  run  ?  Not 
he.  He  squatted  and  flattened  his  ears,  and 
swished  his  tail.  I  moved  the  spot-light  a  couple 
of  feet  away  from  him;  he  studied  it,  and  then 
he  suddenly  sprang  at  it,  hissing  and  clawing; 
he  arched  his  back  and  fought  it  as  I  made  it 
dance  about  the  court;  he  rushed  it;  he  boxed 
it  with  his  wicked  claws  extended;  he  snarled 
and  fell  back,  baffled;  but  he  always  came  on 
again.  I  got  tired  before  he  did,  and  went  to 
bed  and  left  him  victorious.  He  was  back  two 
nights  later,  and  fought  the  light  again;  he 
has  been  back  four  or  five  times.  To  him  that 
ray  of  light,  menacing  him  and  leaping  about 
him,  is  not  only  an  enemy,  but  an  enemy  whose 
hostility  must  be  inexplicable;  it  must  shoot 
down  into  the  blackness  at  him  like  a  malign 
miracle.  But  his  heart  is  stout.  Whsther  the 
phenomenon  is  human  or  feline  or  demoniac, 

59 


Prefaces 


he  is  not  to  be  daunted;  he  has  the  courage  of 
Ajax.  If  he  weighed  fifty  pounds  instead  of 
ten,  he  would  decimate  New  York  City — the 
Tammany  policemen  would  not  touch  him,  out 
of  respect  for  the  species — and  become  as  much 
of  a  hero  as  one  of  America's  popular  mur 
derers. 


Preface  to  the  Prospectus  of 
a  Club 


Preface  to  the  Prospectus  of  a  Club 

BROOKLYN  is  getting  to  be  a  devil  of  a  place. 
They  are  organizing  a  club  over  there,  and  the 
name  of  it  is  to  be  La  Boheme  .  .  .  just  like 
that:  La  Boheme!  With  one  of  those  rakish, 
foreign  looking  accents  over  the  E.  One  of 
those  sassy  accents  that  make  you  think  of  Tril 
by  and  the  Latin  Quarter  and  .  .  .  and  .  .  . 
oh,  you  know !  All  that  sort  of  thing ! 

They  have  been  having  oyster  fights  at  the 
church  parsonages  and  elocutionary  teas  at  the 
Pouch  Gallery  and  hearing  it  hinted  that  they 
are  staid  and  conservative,  long  enough,  and 
now  they  are  going  to  show  they  have  some  vie 
over  there,  if  you  get  what  we  mean.  Green 
wich  Village  isn't  the  only  place  in  Greater 
New  York  that  can  get  away  with  this  vie  stuff. 
There  has  always  been  plenty  of  vie  in  Brook- 


Prefaces 


lyn,  but  people  in  Manhattan  and  the  Bronx 
have  pretended  not  to  believe  it. 

People  in  Greenwich  Village  wouldn't  act  as 
if  they  owned  all  the  esprit  and  verve  and  vie 
in  the  five  boroughs  if  they  only  knew  more 
about  Brooklyn. 

Walt  Whitman  used  to  live  over  there 
and  edit  the  Eagle  and  go  swimming  in  But- 
fcermilk  Channel,  two  points  off  the  starboard 
bow  of  Hank  Beecher's  church.  Once  an  old 
Long  Island  skipper  sunk  a  harpoon  into  Walt's 
haunch  when  he  came  up  to  blow,  and  the  poet, 
snorting  and  bellowing  and  spouting  verse, 
towed  the  whaler  and  his  vessel  clear  out  to 
Montauk  before  he  shook  the  iron  loose.  Is 
there  a  bard  in  Greenwich  Village  that  could 
do  that?  Not  even  Jack  Reed,  who  writes  like 
Byron  and  swims  like  Leander,  could  do  that. 

Walt  was  a  Brooklynite;  Ben  De  Casseres 
was  born  there;  Newell  Hillis  and  Jim  Hune- 
ker  and  Laura  Jean  Libbey  live  there  now,  and 
we  moved  away  ourself  only  a  few  months  ago. 
And  now  that  the  vie  over  there  is  getting  more 
organized,  and  more  Boheme-like,  so  to  speak, 

64 


Preface  to  the  Prospectus  of  a  Club 

we're  going  to  move  back  when  our  present 
lease  runs  out. 

There  have  always  been  literati  and  vie  in 
Brooklyn,  if  you  know  where  to  look  for  them. 
Ed  Markham  is  going  over  there  and  recite 
"The  Man  with  the  Hoe"  when  this  La  Boheme 
Club  opens  up,  out  on  Washington  avenue,  half 
way  between  the  Pouch  Gallery  and  the  place 
where  the  Battle  of  Long  Island  was  fought. 
And  speaking  of  the  Battle  of  Long  Island,  Mr. 
Higgins,  the  ink  manufacturer,  once  offered  a 
prize  for  the  best  piece  of  poetry  about  the 
Battle  of  Long  Island,  which  gave  quite  an  im 
petus  to  the  efforts  of  all  of  us  younger  Brook 
lyn  literati.  The  winning  poem  wasn't  written 
in  his  brand  of  ink  at  all,  but  he  was  game  and 
paid  the  prize  just  the  same.  If  Mr.  Higgins 
isn't  asked  to  join  this  new  La  Boheme  Club  it 
will  be  a  darned  shame. 

Mr.  Eugene  V.  Brewster — undoubtedly  Eu 
gene  Vie  Brewster — who  is  considerable  litter 
ateur  himself,  a  patron  of  all  the  arts,  and  quite 
an  authority  on  Boheme,  both  here  and  abroad, 
we  understand,  is  starting  this  new  La  Boheme 
65 


Prefaces 


Club;  and  his  own  house  on  Washington  ave 
nue  is  to  be  the  clubhouse.  There's  nothing  of 
the  short  sport  about  Eugene  Vie  Brewsterl 
To  give  you  some  idea,  we  quote  Rule  5  of  the 
House  Rules  from  the  prospectus: 

The  freedom  of  the  whole  house  is  conceded  to  all 
guests  and  is  desired  by  the  host  and  hostess.  The 
books  in  the  library,  the  engravings  in  the  dining  room, 
the  paintings  in  the  salon,  the  photos  in  the  hall,  the 
pen  and  inks  in  the  den,  the  piano,  the  pianola,  the 
harp,  the  guitar,  the  curios,  the  portfolios — every 
thing — are  to  be  freely  utilized.  Please  don't  all  con 
gregate  in  one  corner  of  one  room. 

There's  nothing  takes  the  vie  out  of  a  Bo- 
heme  party  like  everybody  bunching  together  in 
one  corner,  or  sitting  around  the  walls  not  say 
ing  anything.  They  used  to  do  that  at  spelling- 
bees  back  home  when  we  were  a  kid,  before 
the  spelling  actually  started;  and  Julius  Cham 
bers,  in  his  department  in  the  Brooklyn  Eagle, 
mentioned  that  he  noticed  a  tendency  toward 
the  same  thing  at  Windsor  Palace  when  Queen 
Victoria  was  presented  to  him.  E.  Vie  Brew- 
ster  is  right  to  speak  out  plainly  and  firmly 
about  that  corner  stuff  at  the  start. 
66 


Preface  to  the  Prospectus  of  a  Club 

We  might  as  well  give  all  the  rest  of  the 
rules  while  we  are  about  it: 

This  organization  shall  have  only  one  officer,  a 
vice-president.  It  shall  meet  every  now  and  then, 
but  usually  on  Sunday,  from  five  to  eleven.  There 
shall  be  no  dues,  no  elections,  no  formalities,  and  no 
business.  It  shall  have  no  constitution  nor  by-laws. 
Membership  shall  consist  of  attendance.  Any  per 
son  may  call  a  meeting  at  any  time  or  place  and  all 
may  attend  who  are  invited.  Any  person  is  eligible 
who  can  do  something,  or  who  has  done  something, 
in  science,  arms,  letters  or  any  of  the  arts.  Members 
may  dress  as  they  please,  but  semi-formal  dress  is 
preferred.  Every  person  attending  must  expect  to 
be  called  upon  at  any  meeting,  without  notice,  to  do 
his  or  her  bit,  and  to  do  it — if  convenient.  Hence, 
please  come  prepared.  The  purpose  of  this  organiza 
tion  shall  be  to  promote  social  intercourse;  to  bring 
together  agreeable  people  of  talent;  to  encourage  so 
cial,  political,  domestic  and  national  economy;  to  give 
receptions  to  distinguished  people;  to  exchange  ideas, 
sift  them  and  make  public  the  best  ones;  lastly,  but 
not  leastly,  to  encourage  early  hours — early  hours  for 
retiring  and  rising,  and  hence  early  hours  for  begin 
ning  and  ending  all  evening  entertainments.  .  .  .  The 
ladies  may  remove  their  wraps,  second  floor  rear;  gen 
tlemen,  second  floor  front.  .  .  .  Buffet  supper  served 
in  the  dining  room  at  seven.  Help  yourself.  After 
the  entertainment,  or  between  numbers,  late  comers 
may  go  below  and  partake  of  what's  left.  Smoking 
material  and  some  mild  fluids  for  the  gentlemen  in  the 
"den" — second  floor  front.  Smoking  is  also  endured 
in  the  library  after  eight,  but  not  elsewhere.  .  .  . 
Every  guest  is  required  to  "register"  in  one  or  more 

67 


Prefaces 


of  the  albums  in  the  library — and  to  write  something 
besides  a  mere  name.  There  will  be  a  clock  in  every 
room.  Curfew  shall  not  ring,  but  eleven  o'clock  is 
late  enough.  We  should  all  be  in  bed  by  twelve. — Eu 
gene  V.  Brewster,  Vice-President,  pro  tern. 

Eleven  o'clock  is  late  enough,  wild  spirits 
though  we  be !  Some  of  us  have  to  go  all  the 
way  to  Pineapple  street,  through  the  hurly- 
burly  of  Brooklyn's  night  life,  of  a  Sunday 
evening  when  the  churches  are  letting  out,  so 
let  us  take  our  wraps  from  the  second  floor, 
rear  and  front,  put  them  over  our  semi-formal 
dress,  write  our  mot  in  the  album  and  sally 
forth  .  .  .  these  are  mad  nights,  these  nights 
in  Brooklyn's  Bohemia,  but  we  must  not  overdo 
them! 

But  let  us  not  be  overly  careful  as  we  pass 
Borough  Hall  ...  let  us  be  jovial,  and  chant 
whimsically  as  we  go,  with  a  wicked  thought 
that  it  will  be  twelve  by  the  clock  on  the  Eagle 
Building  before  we  retire,  a  stanza  or  two  from 
"Curfew  Shall  Not  Ring  To-night!"  And,  as 
that  Bohemian,  F.  P.  A.,  used  to  say,  "so  home 
and  to  bed." 

William  Marion  Reedy,  we  understand,  is 


Preface  to  the  Prospectus  of  a  Club 

to  come  all  the  way  from  St.  Louis  to  Brook 
lyn  to  recite  the  entire  poem,  "Curfew  Shall 
Not  Ring  To-night,"  for  this  new  La  Boheme 
Club  some  evening. 
Ah,  this  is  the  vie/ 


Preface  to  a  Medium's  Dope 
Book 


Preface  to  a  Medium  s  Dope  Book 

THIS  volume  was  put  into  our  hands  by  a  pro 
fessional  spiritualistic  medium  who  felt  that  a 
change  of  scene  was,  temporarily  at  least,  to 
his  advantage.  He  left  town  hurriedly.  There 
was  a  train  wreck,  and  he  "passed  over.n 

We  have  tried  many  times  since  to  get  into 
communication  with  him  for  the  purpose  of 
asking  him  what  to  do  with  the  book,  but  with 
out  success.  One  would  think  that  a  medium's 
ghost  might  find  it  easier  to  get  a  message  across 
than  any  other  sort  of  spirit.  But  Mr.  Pedder 
had  nothing  to  add  after  death  to  the  volume 
which  he  so  laboriously  compiled  during  life. 

There  are  in  the  book  explicit  directions  for 
producing  nearly  every  phenomenon  known  to 
psychical  research,  and  there  is  a  list  of  places 
73 


Prefaces 


and  persons  from  which  and  from  whom  the 
latest  tricks  and  apparatus  may  be  purchased. 
Materialization  was  nothing  to  Mr.  Pedder 
(until  he  died,  that  is). 

There  is  a  catalog  of  some  twelve  thou 
sand  citizens  of  various  American  communi 
ties  who  believe  in  spirit  communication,  with  a 
longer  or  shorter  entry  after  each  name.  From 
this  catalog  one  may  glean  such  information 
as  this:  "Mr.  and  Mrs.  Henry  Blank,  No. 
Rosalie  Court,  Chicago;  well-to-do  re 
tired  haberdasher;  son,  Albert,  entered  spirit 
life  August  18,  1901,  aged  21;  daughter, 
Martha,  passed  over  Jan.  10,  1904,  aged  19, 
on  eve  of  marriage.  Albert,  student  Chicago 
university;  was  taking  course  in  philosophy; 
has  met  Plato,  Socrates,  Marcus  Aurelius  in 
spirit  life,  etc." 

Pedder,  before  he  passed  over  himself,  told 
us  how  such  information  was  collected  by  me 
diums  and  passed  from  one  to  another.  A 
medium  entering  a  community  a  stranger — and 
dealing  with  people  "about  whom  it  was  abso 
lutely  impossible  he  could  know  anything  at  all" 

74 


Preface  to  a  Medium's  Dope  Book 

— knows  a  great  deal,  thanks  to  his  dope  book. 

More  interesting,  to  us,  was  Pedder  himself. 
For,  in  spite  of  knowing  all  the  tricks  of  the 
trade,  he  was  the  most  credulous  mortal  we 
ever  met.  Pedder  would  go  to  seances,  not 
primarily  to  admire  the  technique  of  some  pro 
fessional  brother  or  sister,  but  with  the  ever-re 
current  hope  of  seeing  something  inexplicable 
by  any  hypothesis  of  trickery. 

"Gee !"  he  would  say  to  us  after  such  an  ex 
perience.  "I  thought  for  a  minute  last  night 
I  was  up  against  the  real  thing!'* 

" Well  ?"  we  would  ask. 

"It  wasn't,"  Pedder  would  say  sadly.  "Just 
a  smooth  worker.  I  watched  him  close,  hop 
ing  all  the  time  it  was  straight  goods,  but  finally 
I  got  hep  to  how  he  done  it."  Pedder  was  not 
always  grammatical. 

"I  can  do  it  myself  with  a  little  practice," 
Pedder  would  say  with  a  sigh.  "Listen — here's 
what  he  done — and  it's  a  peach,  too  .  .  ."  and 
Pedder  would  proceed  to  demonstrate  and  ex 
plain. 

Once  he  delivered  himself  to  this  effect: 
75 


Prefaces 


"There's  gotta  be  spirits!  I  was  talkin'  to 
Eddie  Slicker  last  week.  You  know  who  Eddie 
is,  don't  you?  Smoothest  worker  in  the  busi 
ness.  'Eddie,'  I  says,  'do  you  always  fake  it?' 
'Tom,'  he  says,  'so  help  me,  there's  times 
when  I  don't  know  whether  I'm  fakin'  it  or  not.' 
'Eddie,'  I  says,  'don't  bull  me/9  'Tom,'  he  says, 
'I  wouldn't.  But  so  help  me,  Tom,  there's 
been  more'n  once  when  these  dam'  skeptics  had 
me  in  a  corner  that  something  helped  me  out  of 
the  hole!  Tom,'  he  says,  'there's  gotta  be 
ghosts!'  'Eddie,'  I  says,  'the  same  thing  has 
happened  to  me  I' ' 

"But  has  it?"  we  asked. 

"No,"  he  admitted.  "I  was  just  bulling 
Eddie.  But  is  that  any  sign  Eddie  was  bulling 
me?" 

And  then,  after  much  deep  thought: 

"Where  there's  a  demand  there's  gotta  be  a 
supply.  Ain't  that  logical,  huh?  If  there 
wasn't  any  ghosts  how  would  people  get  the 
notion  of  askin'  for  'em  in  the  first  place? 
What?  Look  at  all  these  scientists — all  these 
psychical  researchers.  Do  you  mean  to  tell  me 

76 


Preface  to  a  Medium's  'Dope  Book 

all  those  educated  men  are  bein'  fooled?  Not 
on  your  life!  There's  gotta  be  spirits!" 

"But  youVe  fooled  some  of  the  scientists 
yourself,"  we  reminded  him. 

"What  does  that  prove?"  he  answered  us 
indignantly.  "Just  because  I  put  across  a  phony 
check,  is  that  a  sign  there's  no  good  checks? 
Not  on  your  life !  The  trouble  with  you  skep 
tics  is  that  you  can't  believe  nothing!" 

It  is  the  trouble  with  skeptics;  but  it  always 
made  poor  Pedder  very  downcast  when  we  re 
minded  him  that  we  had  actually  been  on  the 
road  to  belief  when  we  had  met  him  and  he 
had  in  his  vanity  shown  us  his  box  of  tricks. 

"I  don't  deny,"  he  would  say,  "that  I  have 
been  a  stumbling  block  to  you.  But  think  of 
all  the  others  in  the  world  I've  made  believers 
of  I  IVe  given  a  lot  of  satisfaction  to  a  lot  o' 
people,  I  tell  you!  I  been  led  to  it — led  by 
an  occult  power  to  do  the  good  I've  done!  I 
tell  you,  there's  gotta  be  spirits !" 

But  Pedder's  ghost,  in  spite  of  an  agreement 
that  the  one  who  died  first  would  appear  to  the 
other,  has  never  come  back  to  look  for  his 
77 


Prefaces 


book.  Probably  the  conditions  are  not  right. 
We  publish  the  book  in  a  last  effort  to  hear 
from  the  author. 

It  is  the  sort  of  monument  Pedder  would 
hate;  anything  his  ghost  can  compass  to  pre 
vent  its  issue  that  ghost  will  not  fail  to  attempt. 


Preface  to  a  Treatise  on  a 
New  Art 


Preface  to  a  Treatise  on  a  New  Art 

UNCLE  Peleg  Higglesworth  never  suspected 
that  he  was  to  become  the  basis  of  a  New  Art, 
which  was,  moreover,  destined  to  perish  with 
the  passing  of  his  spirit.  When  he  came  on 
from  Illinois  to  pay  a  long  visit  to  his  nephew 
Jason  and  Jason's  wife,  who  lived  in  Green 
wich  Village  and  were  painters,  it  was  not  be 
cause  he  was  interested  in  any  sort  of  art  what 
ever  ...  he  had  determined  to  collect  a  good 
time  in  advance  on  the  money  which  he  had 
planned  to  leave  Jason. 

When  Uncle  Peleg  arrived  it  was  late  at 
night,  and  he  was  put  to  bed  on  a  couch  in  an 
alcove  of  the  studio  apartment  which  the 
younger  Higglesworths  inhabited.  Ten  min 
utes  after  he  had-retired  Jason  and  Mrs.  Jason 
leapt  from  their  bed,  clasped  each  other  in  a 

81 


Prefaces 


wild  alarm  and  stood  trembling  and  interro 
gating  each  other  with  terror-stricken  eyes. 

"It  is  the  Sixth  Avenue  elevated,"  mur 
mured  Jason,  after  a  moment.  UA  train  has 
left  the  track  and  is  crashing  through  the  Jef 
ferson  Market  building." 

"No,  Jason,  it  is  a  bombardment,"  said  his 
wife.  "I  hear  the  shrill  cries  of  the  dying 
women  and  children  mingled  with  the  scream 
of  the  shells.  German  U-boats  have  got  into 
the  North  River  and  are  battering  down  New 
York." 

But  it  was  neither.  It  was  Uncle  Peleg  snor 
ing.  Uncle  Peleg's  snores  could  express  many 
things,  but  there  are  no  words  that  can  express 
Uncle  Peleg's  snores. 

Some  snores  and  snorers  one  may  get  used 
to,  but  Uncle  Peleg  snored  in  many  moods;  he 
was  versatile  and  various  in  his  snoring;  sail 
ors  never  get  so  they  enjoy  hurricanes,  and  the 
dwellers  on  the  flanks  of  Vesuvius  take  no  de 
light  in  volcanic  eruptions;  and  the  winds  of  the 
Horn  and  the  thunders  of  Vesuvius  were  both 
in  Uncle  Peleg's  snore,  but  more  than  merely 

82 


Preface  to  a  Treatise  on  a  New  Art 

these  was  there.  In  its  milder  and  gentler 
moods  the  snore  was  as  if  a  thousand  wildcats 
were  rushing  in  waves  of  passion  to  battle 
against  and  die  among  a  hundred  moaning  buzz 
saws.  There  was  this  in  Uncle  Peleg's  snore, 
and  there  was  more  than  this.  A  saint  might 
walk  through  hell  without  suffering,  protected 
by  his  holiness;  but  if  a  devil  were  to  walk 
through  heaven  he  would  become  distressingly 
vocal  with  pain,  and  there  would  be  what  hu 
man  beings  could  understand  in  the  expression 
of  his  ultimate  pathos  and  self  pity  .  .  .  there 
would  be  a  note  that  men  could  understand, 
but  no  waking  man  could  reach  or  reproduce  it. 
There  was  all  this  in  Uncle  Peleg's  snore,  and 
there  was  more. 

In  his  waking  hours,  Uncle  Peleg  was  quite 
like  other  retired  bankers  who  have  come  on 
to  New  York  to  visit  their  relations  and  en 
joy  life  for  a  while  before  they  settle  down  to 
die.  When  he  was  spoken  to  about  his  snor 
ing,  he  would  say,  incredulously:  "Snore? 
Snore?  You  think  I  snore,  do  you?  Shucks! 
More'n  likely  you  hear  yourself  snoring."  And 
83 


Prefaces 


Jason  Higglesworth  and  his  wife  would  say 
no  more  .  .  .  for,  after  all,  were  they  not  to 
inherit  Uncle  Peleg's  money?  And  the  old 
man  saw  to  it  that  they  had  a  good  time  while 
he  stayed  with  them;  he  was  liberal,  and  eager 
for  amusement — although,  when  he  occasion 
ally  fell  asleep  at  a  theater  or  the  opera  or  in 
a  restaurant,  it  took  all  the  tact  that  Jason  and 
his  wife  possessed  to  extricate  themselves  from 
the  situation. 

But  one  day  Uncle  Peleg  suddenly  an 
nounced  that  he  had  lost  all  his  money.  He 
had  been  meddling  with  the  stock  exchange. 
Gratitude  for  what  he  had  done,  gratitude  for 
what  he  had  intended  to  do,  common  decency, 
impelled  the  nephew  and  his  wife  to  offer 
Uncle  Peleg  a  home  as  long  as  he  should  live, 
for  he  had  no  other  relations  in  the  world  and 
could  no  longer  work. 

His  loss  of  money  affected  the  old  man 
strangely.  With  it  he  lost  all  interest  in  life, 
apparently,  and  he  found  it  difficult  to  keep 
awake  at  all,  day  or  night.  Formerly  his  sleep 
ing  hours  were  no  more  than  those  of  the  av- 
84. 


Preface  to  a  Treatise  on  a  New  Art 

erage  man,  although  he  used  them  so  differ 
ently;  but  now  he  would  lapse  into  his  terrible 
and  devastating  slumber  at  meals,  or  sitting  in 
front  of  the  fire  in  the  afternoons,  or  while 
riding  in  a  street  car,  or  even  while  assisting 
with  the  housework,  which  became  one  of  the 
old  man's  humble  duties. 

And  always  when  he  woke  he  would  say: 
"Snore?  Snore?  People  think  I  snore?  Like 
ly  you  snore  yourself,  Jason."  But  Jason  and 
his  wife  could  no  longer  work  at  painting  pic 
tures  because  of  the  old  man's  noise;  and  this 
was  serious,  for  now  they  must  live  by  paint 
ing  pictures  and  support  him,  too. 

They  were  obliged  to  take  a  smaller  and 
cheaper  studio,  and  this  was  terrible,  for  it 
brought  them  still  nearer  to  Uncle  Peleg,  who 
now  slept  far  more  than  he  waked.  But  still 
sentiments  of  loyalty  forbade  Jason  and  his 
wife  turning  the  old  man  out  upon  a  startled 
and  echoing  world. 

One  day  as  Mrs.  Jason  and  her  husband 
paced  up  and  down  the  studio  and  looked  at 
the  old  man,  who  had  been  stricken  with  sleep 
85 


Prefaces 


as  he  was  wiping  the  breakfast  dishes,  and 
stood  bending  over  the  sink  snoring  out  a  bat 
tle  piece  that  would  have  made  Wagner  en 
vious,  an  idea  came  to  Jason. 

"My  dear,"  he  told  his  wife,  "it  has  just 
occurred  to  me  what  Uncle  Peleg's  snores 
really  are.  When  man  sleeps  his  subconscious 
mind  is  in  control  and  his  ego  ranges  back 
through  all  the  past  life  of  the  race  ...  in 
Uncle  Peleg's  snores  we  hear  the  Cave  Man 
fighting  with  the  Boar,  in  Uncle  Peleg's  snores 
is  the  orchestral  expression  of  the  evolution  of 
the  human  being..  Each  snore  represents  a 
nightmare,  and  each  nightmare  is  a  drama  and 
a  dream  of  some  struggle,  fearful  and  fatal 
and  beastly,  that  actually  occurred  away  back 
in  the  dim  dawn  of  time.  The  wandering  ego 
of  our  Uncle  Peleg  comes  downward  from  the 
days  before  man  was  really  man,  comes  down 
from  pre-Adamic  times  and  sings  its  saga  as 
it  comes.  I  have  an  idea.  .  .  ." 

Jason's  artistic  problem  was  to  control  this 
vocal  hobo  soul  of  Uncle  Peleg's  in  its  expres 
sion.  With  cleverly  devised  pedals  and  levers 
36 


Preface  to  a  Treatise  on  a  New  Art 

and  keys  and  stops,  wrought  into  an  instrument 
harnessed  about  the  palpitating  body  of  Uncle 
Peleg,  with  weights  and  wires  so  arranged  that 
pressure  upon  the  solar  plexus,  the  medulla 
oblongata  and  various  other  nervous  centers 
could  be  increased,  decreased  and  regulated  at 
will — Jason  finally  realized  his  plan. 

He  would  sit  for  long  hours  at  The  Uncle 
Peleg  practicing,  until  he  could  present  a  sound- 
drama  of  Pleistocene  Man  spearing  a  Dinosaur, 
or  a  tribe  of  nondescript  arboreal  half-simian 
creatures  slaying  a  mastodon  with  fire-hardened 
sticks  thrust  into  the  creature's  eyes,  and  then 
he  hired  one  of  the  small  Greenwich  Village 
theaters  and  made  his  public  appearance. 

Hermione  was  there  .  .  .  "How  primeval  1" 
said  Hermione. 

It  was  a  New  Art. 

Fame  poured  in  upon  the  Higglesworths, 
and  gold.  But  just  as  they  had  made  arrange 
ments  to  transfer  The  Uncle  Peleg  to  one  of 
the  larger  Broadway  auditoriums,  something 
happened  ...  an  overstrained  membrane, 
perhaps,  burst  .  .  .  who  knows  what?  Any- 


Prefaces 


way,  it  was  in  the  gloaming,  and  at  home,  as 
Uncle  Peleg  would  have  wished  it  to  be. 

"Snore?  Snore?  So  you  think  I  snore,  do 
you?  Snore  yourself  1"  were  the  old  man's 
last  words. 

And  he  drifted  out  into  the  unknown  on  the 
wild  blast  and  vibrant  wind  of  one  last  long 
moaning  snore  that  shook  the  Island  of  Man 
hattan  from  the  Woolworth  Building  to  Grant's 
Tomb. 


Preface  to  a  Memorandum 
Book 


Preface  to  a  Memorandum  Book 

DARIUS,  one  of  Persia's  most  enterprising 
kings  and  indefatigable  publicists,  became  vio 
lently  angry  against  the  Athenians  one  day. 
They  had  helped  certain  Greeks  resident  in 
Asia  Minor  in  a  revolt  against  his  authority. 
Therefore,  Darius  swore  by  the  name  of  Or- 
mazd  and  by  the  bones  of  Cambyses  that  he 
would  smear  Athens  into  a  pasty  reminiscence 
when  he  got  around  to  it. 

But  the  cares  of  kingship  are  many.  Darius 
was  so  busy  ruling  his  subjects  and  causing 
praises  of  himself  to  be  chiseled  upon  the  cliff 
of  Behistun  that  whole  days  would  go  by  when 
he  would  forget  to  execrate  the  Athenians.  Da 
rius  was  by  nature  a  forgetful  man.  He  would 
awaken  at  night  with  the  plaguing  sense  of 
91 


Prefaces 


something  important  left  undone ;  he  would  lie 
tossing  on  his  couch  until  the  morning  chariots 
began  to  rattle  along  the  cobbled  streets  of 
Persepolis  before  he  remembered  that  the 
thing  he  had  omitted  doing  the  day  before  was 
to  hate  the  Athenians. 

Things  could  not  go  on  in  this  fashion.  The 
Athenians  were  getting  too  much  sleep  and 
Darius  too  little.  Some  means  must  be  found 
of  reminding  the  king  to  be  passionately  angry 
at  the  Athenians  every  day.  The  magi  were 
consulted.  They  advised  that  the  office  of  Hu 
man  Memorandum  Book  be  created.  It  was 
done.  A  young  man  of  good  family  was  select 
ed  and  invested  with  the  salary,  dignity,  re 
sponsibility  and  apparel  of  the  post.  His  name, 
we  should  say  at  a  guess,  was  Marmaduke.  At 
any  rate,  we  think  of  him  as  Marmaduke.  He 
dressed  his  hair  in  flat,  oiled  ringlets  and  wore 
gilded  sandals. 

-Marmaduke,  each  day  as  the  king  drew  back 

his  chair  after  luncheon,  would  walk  nobly  into 

the  great  dining  room  of  the  palace  at  Susa, 

announced  by  shawms  and  trumpets   and  at- 

92 


Preface  to  a  Memorandum  Book 

tended  by  slaves  and  pages,  and  cry,  flinging 
up  his  hand  gracefully  and  dramatically: 

"Hail,  King!" 

"Hail,  Marmaduke !"  the  king  would  reply. 

"O  King!  Remember!"  Marmaduke  would 
proceed. 

"O  Marmaduke!  Remember  what?"  the 
king  would  ask,  and  Marmaduke,  signaling  for 
another  blare  of  shawms,  would  come  three 
steps  nearer  and  declaim,  in  a  resonant  tenor 
voice  .  .  . 

Somehow,  we  have  a  very  strong  sense  of  this 
Marmaduke's  personality;  he  used  a  great  deal 
of  scent,  and  the  fringes  of  his  cape  jingled  as 
he  walked;  his  eyes  were  of  a  hazel  color  and 
even  in  mid-gesture  they  would  sometimes  slide 
sidewise  toward  the  queens  drawn  up  in  rows 
about  the  dining  room  waiting  for  Darius  to 
finish  eating  so  that  they  might  begin;  he* was  a 
connoisseur  of  fighting  bulls  and  a  patron  of 
sculptors;  he  often  affected  to  be  bored  when 
captives  were  strangled  in  the  courtyard  of 
an  afternoon;  he  made  little  poems  and  had 
limited  editions  of  them  baked  on  cream-col- 
93 


Prefaces 


ored  bricks;  he  was  proud  of  his  archery  and 
felt  disgraced  when  he  shot  down  a  workman 
from  a  roof  to  please  the  ladies  if  his  arrow 
had  not  pierced  the  fellow  precisely  through 
the  eye ;  a  merry,  exquisite,  gallant  sort  -of  chap 
was  Marmaduke,  with  interests  both  esthetic 
and  athletk  .  .  . 

Marmaduke  would  declaim,  in  his  pleasant 
tenor  voice: 

"O  King!     Remember  the  Athenians!" 

And  then  the  king  would  remember  them  and 
would  think  of  them  with  the  most  deadly  in 
dignation,  and  he  would  go  cheerfully  through 
the  day  and  calmly  through  the  night.  .  .  . 
For  a  while  all  was  well  .  .  .  for  a  while  .  .  . 

Darius,  although  he  learned  to  remember  the 
Athenians,  with  Marmaduke  to  help  him,  would 
often  forget  what  particular  thiag  it  was  he 
should  remember  about  them.  It  was  eight 
years  before  he  went  to  war  against  them.  .  .  . 
The  forgetful  man  is  doomed.  .  .  .  Darius, 
in  the  year  486  B.  C.,  while  engaged  in  fitting 
out  his  third  expedition  against  Greece,  sudden 
ly  forgot  what  he  was  fitting  out  the  expedition 

94 


Preface  to  a  Memorandum  Book 

for.  None  of  the  courtiers  dared  tell  him  un 
less  he  questioned  them,  for  that  would  have 
shown  superiority  to  the  king;  each  day  Manna- 
duke  would  tell  him  to  remember  the  Athenians, 
but  Maunaduke  did  not  presume  to  tell  him 
why  they  were  to  be  remembered.  Darius  died, 
in  the  midst  of  the  vast  host  he  had  assembled, 
of  protracted  insomnia.  ...  In  the  long  run, 
the  forgetful  man  always  fails.  .  .  .  Darius 
was  a  great  king  in  his  day.  .  .  .  Give  him 
time  enough,  and  the  man  who  cannot  remem 
ber  will  come  to  grief.  .  .  .  Where  is  that 
Darius  now? 

And  yet,  in  looking  over  our  own  memo 
randum  book,  we  cannot  find  it  in  our  heart  to 
be  too  hard  on  the  constitutionally  forgetful. 
There  are,  in  our  book,  a  hundred  little  scrib 
bled  notes  and  reminders.  We  know  what  some 
of  them  signify,  in  detail.  And  in  a  general 
way  we  know  what  they  all  represent.  They 
stand  for  a  couple  of  years  of  unredeemed 
promises  on  our  part.  They  proceed  from  a 
wide,  vague,  random  feeling  of  good  nature; 
an  ineffectual  good  nature,  that  never  gets  any- 
95 


Prefaces 


where  in  particular,  and  is  worthy  of  no  re 
spect  because  it  is  not  a  positive  quality. 

Or,  at  least,  it  began  as  a  merely  negative 
thing;  though  it  may  have  acquired  a  positive 
force  by  this  time.  It  began  as  an  absence  of 
active  ill  nature.  It  was  our  cue,  being  fat,  to 
appear  good-natured;  the  popular  supposition 
that  fat  men  are  good-natured  was  too  much 
for  us ;  we  were  too  indolent  to  struggle  against 
it.  It  would  have  troubled  us  greatly  to  have 
acted  as  mean  as  we  felt,  on  many  occasions; 
we  were  too  selfish  to  expend  our  vital  energy 
in  hating  certain  persons  as  much  as  our  moral 
perception  told  us  they  should  be  hated.  Our 
affectation  of  good-nature  finally  became  gen 
uine  ;  and  yet  the  good-nature  is  ineffectual. 

It  comes  out  of  us  at  odd  times  in  the  desire 
to  have  the  moment  pass  pleasantly.  We  hear 
some  one  telling  of  his  hopes  and  disappoint 
ments  and  we  are  moved,  and  we  say:  "It 
sounds  like  a  corking  good  idea;  send  your 
manuscript  to  us  and  we  will  take  it  to  a  pub 
lisher  for  you;  we  know  a  lot  of  publishers." 

And  he  sends  the  manuscript,  and  after  a 
96 


Preface  to  a  Memorandum  Book 

long  while  he  gets  it  back  again,  because  we 
have  not  remembered  to  take  it  to  a  publisher, 
and  because  we  don't  know  any  of  them  well 
enough  to  bother  them  with  the  manuscript  of 
other  people,  anyhow. 

But,  in  the  meantime,  we  have  methodically 
made  a  note  of  it  in  the  little  book.  And 
that  and  all  the  other  notes  in  the  little  book 
torture  us  and  even  prevent  us  sleeping  as 
much  as  we  should  between  meals;  the  very 
sight  of  the  little  book  brings  on  an  agony  of 
remorse.  At  times,  when  we  feel  ourself  get 
ting  too  cocky,  we  open  the  little  book  and  look 
into  it  to  mortify  the  spirit. 

And  yet,  we  do  not  mean  to  lie  about  these 
things.  We  say,  "Yes;  we  will  send  you  a 
copy  of  such  and  such  a  thing!"  "Yes,  we  will 
get  your  brother  a  job!"  "Yes,  we  will  be 
glad  to  go  to  the  dinner  and  make  a  little  talk." 

But  at  the  time  we  are  sincere.  There  is 
nothing  we  like  to  see  so  much  as  the  gleam  of 
pleasure  in  a  person's  eye  when  he  feels  that 
we  have  sympathized  with  him,  understood  him, 
interested  ourself  in  his  welfare.  At  these  mo- 


Prefaces 


ments  something  fine  and  spiritual  passes  be 
tween  two  friends.  These  moments  are  the 
moments  worth  living. 

And — it  had  not  occurred  to  us  before,  but 
the  reflection  comes  to  us  as  we  write — these 
spiritual  emotions  are  too  rare  and  precious  to 
have  anything  so  gross  and  physical  as  an  ac 
tual  deed  follow  them.  It  would  coarsen  and 
cheapen  the  communion  if  a  more  material 
service  were  tagged  onto  one  of  these  divine 
interchanges  of  good  will.  It  would  insult  our 
friend  (or  should  insult  him)  to  descend  from 
the  high,  pure  plane  of  golden  promise  to  the 
toilsome  level  of  performance;  what  he  wants 
out  of  us  (or  what  he  should  want)  is  not  a 
job  for  his  brother — he  wants  to  stir  our  na 
ture  to  a  sympathetic  understanding  of  his 
brother;  he  wants  to  strike  from  us  a  spark  of 
generous  disinterestedness.  And  it  would  be 
degrading  to  translate  this  heavenly  mood  into 
an  earthly  deed. 

As  we  say,  this  explanation  had  not  occurred 
to  us  until  a  couple  of  minutes  ago.  And  now 
that  we  have  thought  of  it  we  shall  be  able  to 
98 


Preface  to  a  Memorandum  Book 

look  at  the  little  book  hereafter  with  less  of 
remorse;  perhaps  we  will  soon  begin  to  cher 
ish  it  as  an  evidence  of  our  superiority. 

We  donate  the  explanation  to  such  of  our 
readers  as  have  similar  little  books  on  their 
consciences. 


Preface  to  a  Hangman's 
Diary\ 


m 


Preface  to  a  Hangman's  Diary 

THE  Hangman  whose  observations  are  in 
troduced  by  these  remarks  was  for  many  years 
a  deputy  sheriff  in  a  certain  county  where  hang 
ings  were  of  frequent  occurrence;  no  matter 
who  was  sheriff  he  was  the  sheriff's  chief  as 
sistant  and  did  the  hanging. 

He  had  a  strong  notion  of  the  dignity  of 
his  vocation;  and  he  was  an  artist,  with  the  ar 
tist's  peculiar  vanities  and  sensibilities.  When 
execution  by  means  of  the  electric  current  was 
adopted  in  his  state  he  hanged  himself  in  the 
courtyard  of  the  jail  where  he  had  hanged  so 
many  others,  and  did  it  quite  beautifully. 

He  did  not  care  to  survive  the  old  order;  the 
world  would  never  wear  quite  the  same  face 
to  him  again,  and  so,  he  left  it.  This  was  sen 
timentality,  no  doubt;  and  yet  it  was  a  senti- 
103 


Prefaces 


mentality  sincerely  felt  and  resolutely  acted 
upon ;  a  sentimentality  that  we  find  lovely.  Too 
many  of  us  are  so  cowardly  that  we  linger  on 
quite  uselessly  after  our  enthusiasms  have  de 
parted;  but  he  adjusted  the  rope  about  his  own 
neck  and  his  leaden  heart  pulled  him  swiftly 
downward  through  the  trap. 

This  Hangman — Henk  was  his  name,  Oba- 
diah  Henk,  and  he  came  of  good,  old,  God 
fearing  Puritan  stock — made  a  practice  of  get 
ting  on  good  terms  with  the  men  whom  he  was 
to  hang  during  their  last  weeks  in  jail.  He 
used  to  say  that  he  had  never  hanged  a  strang 
er;  all  his  clients  were  his  friends;  he  tried  to 
put  a  personal  touch  into  his  work;  the  care 
less,  slipshod  disposition  of  so  many  modern 
artisans  who  make  no  effort  to  cater  to  diversi 
ties  of  individual  taste  was  not  his;  he  liked  each 
man  who  passed  through  his  hands  tc  feel  that 
he  had  made  a  conscientious  study  of  that  man's 
particular  case.  Henk  and  his  "customers,"  as 
he  used  to  call  them,  always  grew  very  fond  of 
each  other  before  they  parted. 

Henk  had  a  pleasing  way  of  carrying  delica- 
104 


Preface  to  a  Hangman's  Diary 

cies  to  those  who  were  later  to  claim  his  profes 
sional  services,  especially  if  they  were  thin.  He 
hated  to  hang  a  very  thin  man  or  a  very  fat 
man;  the  ideal  weight,  he  used  to  say,  was  ex 
actly  one  hundred  and  sixty-nine  pounds,  and 
he  urged  his  friends  to  make  that  weight,  wher 
ever  possible,  against  the  great  day. 

From  his  many  conversations  with  his  friends 
Henk  gradually  pieced  together  a  theory  as  to 
what  it  is  that  sends  men  to  the  gallows. 

He  presents  it  elaborately  in  his  diary;  brief 
ly,  his  conviction  may  be  stated  thus:  It  is  the 
mothers  of  the  race  who  are  its  menace.  Out 
of  two  hundred  and  eighty-seven  men  who  told 
him  the  stories  of  their  lives,  Henk  could  trace 
the  downfall  of  no  less  than  two  hundred  and 
sixty-nine  directly  to  their  mothers.  These  (on 
the  whole)  well-meaning  females  had  coddled 
their  boys  from  the  cradle,  had  implanted  in 
each  boy  the  idea  that  he  belonged  in  a  special 
category  of  humanity,  and  was  therefore  li 
censed  to  consider  himself  superior  to  the  ordi 
nary  communal  restrictions.  The  undisciplined 
selfishness  thus  fostered  in  the  nature  of  the  boy, 
105 


Prefaces 


in  combination  with  a  will  made  weak  and  vio 
lent  by  early  indulgence,  infallibly  got  him  into 
trouble  when  he  came  into  contact  with  the 
world. 

"The  world's  greatest  evil,"  Henk  writes  on 
page  57  of  his  diary,  "is  mother  love,  and  the 
race  will  not  make  any  real  progress  until  it  has 
been  abolished."  Before  women  are  allowed  to 
become  mothers,  he  argues,  they  should  be  spe 
cifically  and  painstakingly  trained  for  the  task, 
for  after  they  have  achieved  maternity  the  en- 
cradled  race  is  at  their  mercy. 

The  Spartan  method  of  removing  the  boy 
from  maternal  jurisdiction  at  an  early  age  did 
not  appeal  to  Henk.  His  dictum  was,  make  the 
mother  train  the  child,  but  make  her  train  him 
right.  He  seemed  to  think  that  the  only  way 
to  have  women  trained  to  train  boys  right  is 
for  men  to  train  the  women.  There  is  a  flaw  in 
every  system,  there  is  a  point  at  which  each 
philosophy  ceases  to  advance  and  begins  to  run 
round  in  a  circle  like  a  kitten  chasing  its  tail; 
Henk  fails  to  explain  how  men,  who  have  al 
ready  been  given  a  wrong  bias  in  infancy  by 
106 


Preface  to  a  Hangman  s  Diary 

women,  are  to  overcome  that  bias  sufficiently 
to  teach  their  daughters  how  to  teach  their 
grandchildren. 

But  one  does  not  need  to  endorse  Henk  in 
everything  in  order  to  recognize  that  his  occu 
pation  gave  him  a  vantage  point  of  peculiar 
value  from  which  to  con  the  human  race.  Per 
haps  he  fell  into  the  error  of  considering  all 
men  too  narrowly,  of  looking  at  them  too  ex 
clusively  in  relation  to  his  own  profession;  but 
that  is  a  fault  common  to  all  thinkers  who  take 
a  keen  and  loving  interest  in  their  work. 

And  Henk,  at  that,  never  became  a  mere  vul 
gar  faddist.  It  is  true  that  he  might  remark  to 
an  acquaintance  on  the  street,  after  a  lingering 
appraisal,  "Henry,  you're  getting  fat;  be  care 
ful,  Henry;  you've  passed  good  hanging 
weight!" 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  he  had  been  known 
to  say  that  he  enjoyed  a  good  glass  of  beer,  or 
a  good  day's  fishing,  or  a  good  dog  fight,  or 
what  not,  almost  as  much  as  hanging  a  man. 

With  his  pleasant  theories  and  his  little  at 
tentions  to  those  to  whom  he  was  finally  to 
107 


Prefaces 


minister,  and  his  pride  in  his  art,  and  his  agree 
able  sentimentality,  Henk's  personality  is  an  ap 
pealing  one;  and  our  regret  is  that  we  can  only 
indicate  the  character  of  his  diary  so  briefly  in 
stead  of  presenting  it. 


. 


Preface  to  a  Volume  of 
Poetry 


Preface  to  a  Volume  of  Poetry 

WE  have  often  been  asked  to  read  the  poems  in 
the  following  collection  at  teas  and  similar  soul 
and  culture  fights.  We  have  always  refused.  It 
is  not,  as  some  of  our  friends  believe,  because 
of  any  excess  of  timidity  that  we  consistently 
refuse. 

It  is  because  no  one  wants  to  pay  us  what  it  is 
worth  to  us.  We  are  perfectly  willing,  if  we  get 
enough  money  for  it,  to  read  poems  at  Teas, 
Dinners,  Pugilistic  Contests,  Clam-bakes,  Foot 
ball  Games,  Prayer  Meetings  of  Any  Denomi 
nation,  Clinics,  Divorce  Trials,  Balls,  Dedica 
tions,  Lynchings,  Launchings,  Luncheons,  Wed 
dings,  Jail  Deliveries,  Tonsil  Removals,  Ice 
Cream  Socials,  Legal  Executions,  Wrestling 
Matches,  Tooth  Pullings,  Commencement  Ex 
ercises,  Operations  for  Appendicitis,  Coming 
111 


Prefaces 


Out  Parties,  Taffy  Pulls,  Better  Baby  Contests, 
Dog  Shows,  Gambling  House  Raids,  Sunday 
School  Picnics,  Pool  Tournaments,  Spelling 
Bees,  Adenoid  Unveilings,  Murders,  Church 
Suppers  and  Cremations.  But  money  we  must 
have. 

For  while  reading  one's  own  poems  to  a 
gang  of  strangers  need  not,  of  course,  be  abso 
lutely  degrading,  yet  it  is  bound  to  be  a  silly 
sort  of  performance. 

And  it  is  worth  money.  Poetry,  with  us,  is  a 
business;  it  takes  time,  muscular  effort,  nervous 
energy  and,  sometimes,  thought,  to  produce  a 
poem. 

People  do  not  ask  painters  to  go  to  places  and 
paint  pictures  for  nothing,  but  they  are  forever 
trying  to  graft  entertainment  off  of  poets. 

Our  rates,  henceforth,  are  as  follows: 

For  reading  small,  blond,  romantic  poems, 
thirty-five  dollars  per  poem.  Blond,  dove-col 
ored  or  pink  lyrics  prominently  featuring  the 
Soul,  thirty-five  dollars  each. 

Humorous   poems,    not   really   very   funny, 
twenty-five  dollars  each. 
112 


Preface  to  a  Volume  of  Poetry 

Humorous  poems,  with  slightly  sentimental 
flavor,  forty  dollars  each. 

Humorous  poems,  really  quite  funny,  seventy- 
five  dollars  each. 

Dialect  poems  mentioning  persons  called 
"Bill,"  "Jim,"  "Si,"  etc.,  Southern  dialect,  fifty 
dollars  each;  middle  Western,  fifty-five  dollars. 

Pathetic  dialect  verse  charged  for  according 
to  the  quantity  and  quality  of  pathos  desired. 
(See  rates  on  Mother  and  Old  Sweetheart 
poems.) 

Sonnets,  ten  dollars  each.  Not  less  than  five 
sonnets  served  with  any  one  order. 

Pash  poems,  one  hundred  dollars  each.  Pash 
poems,  however,  will  only  be  read  from  the  in 
terior  of  a  heavy  wire  cage. 

Free  verse,  any  kind,  one  dollar  a  line. 

No  matter  how  long  or  how  short  the  lines 
actually  are,  for  business  purposes  a  line  of  free 
verse  is  to  be  considered  as  containing  seven 
words. 

Serious  poems,  melancholy  tone,  fifty  dollars 
each. 

For  ten  dollars  additional  persons  not  to  ex~ 
113 


Prefaces 


ceed  twelve  in  number  will  be  permitted  to  file 
by  and  feel  the  poet's  heart  beat  after  reading 
sad  poems ;  persons  in  excess  of  twelve  in  num 
ber  charged  for  at  the  rate  of  two  dollars  each. 

Serious  poems,  optimistic  in  nature,  fifty  dol 
lars  each. 

Old  Sweetheart  poems,  in  which  she  dies, 
one  hundred  dollars  each.  Old  Folks  at  Home 
poems,  sad,  fifty  dollars  each;  each  reference 
to  angels  five  dollars  additional;  father  killed, 
mother  left  living,  sixty-five  dollars;  both  par 
ents  killed,  seventy-five  dollars;  with  dialect, 
one  hundred  dollars.  Both  parents  killed  dur 
ing  Christmas  holidays,  any  dialect  wanted, 
angels,  toys,  etc.,  two  hundred  dollars.  Audi 
tors'  tears  guaranteed,  and  for  thirty-five  dol 
lars  additional  poet  also  will  cry  while  reading 
this  old  reliable  line  of  family  poetry. 

Religious  poems,  not  more  than  five  stanzas, 
one  hundred  dollars  each. 

Agnostic  poems,  latest  cut,  one  hundred  thir 
ty-five  to  one  hundred  seventy-five  dollars  each. 

These  agnostic  goods  are  for  very  exclusive 
114 


Preface  to  a  Volume  of  Poetry 

circles,  as  are  our  radical  and  anarchistic  poems, 
which  come  at  two  hundred  dollars  each. 

Tame  revolutionary  poems,  usual  Green 
wich  Village  sort  of  thing,  fifty  dollars  each;  if 
read  in  Flatbush,  sixty-five  dollars  each. 

Really  quite  shocking  revolutionary  poems, 
two  hundred  dollars  each.  A  very  modern  line 
of  goods. 

Write  for  special  combination  offers  and  rates 
on  limericks.  We  have  limericks  listed  in  three 
categories : 

(Limericks  Where  Ladies  Are  Present. 
Limericks   Where   Ladies  Are   Absent   but 
Clergymen  Are  Present 
Limericks. 

In  the  event  that  we  are  expected  to  Be  Nice 
and  Meet  People,  20  per  cent,  added  to  above 
rates. 

If  expected  to  Meet  People,  and  Being  Nice 
is  left  optional  with  us,  only  5  per  cent,  added 
to  above  rates. 

Conversation  on  poetry  or  related  topics 
charged  for  at  rate  of  $75  an  hour  in  addition 
to  reading  charges. 

115 


Prefaces 


Conversation  on  Rabindranath  Tagore : 
Listened  To,  $750  an  hour.  Participated  In, 
$  1,000  the  first  hour  and  $350  for  every  addi 
tional  ten  minutes  thereafter. 

Limericks  composed  on  spot  (discreet)  twen 
ty-five  dollars  each.  Impromptu  couplets,  good, 
twenty  dollars  each;  medium,  twelve  dollars 
and  fifty  cents  each;  quite  bad  impromptu  coup 
lets,  five  dollars  each. 

Poetry  written  by  host,  hostess  or  any  guest, 
listened  to  at  rate  of  one  hundred  dollars  per 
quarter  hour. 

Compliments  on  same  to  author,  ten  dollars 
each  additional. 

Compliments  spoken  so  as  to  be  overheard  by 
more  than  eight  persons,  twenty  dollars  each. 

Compliments  dashed  off  in  little  informal 
notes,  forty  dollars  each  if  notes  are  initialed, 
one  hundred  dollars  each  if  notes  are  signed 
with  full  name. 

For  pretending  to  like  Amy  Lowell's  work 
our  rate  is  $1,000  an  hour  or  any  fraction 
thereof. 

No  orders  filled  amounting  to  less  than  two 
116 


Preface  to  a  Volume  of  Poetry 

hundred  dollars  for  ninety  minutes'  work.  Cer 
tified  check  must  be  mailed  with  orders. 

Prices  quoted  are  f.  o.  b.  Pennsylvania  Sta 
tion,  N.  Y.  City. 

Patrons  will  always  confer  a  favor  by  re 
porting  any  inattention  on  the  part  of  the  audi 
ence. 


Preface  to  Old  Doctor 
Gumph's  Almanac 


Preface  to  Old  Doctor  Gumph's 
Almanac 

THIS  Almanac,  from  the  picture  of  the  partially 
flayed  gentleman  in  the  front  to  the  final  adver 
tisement  for  Old  Doctor  Gumph's  Wonder  Oil 
for  Man  and  Beast,  on  the  back  cover,  is  a  work 
of  joy  and  mystery  and  fascination;  it  leads  the 
believing  mind  along  paths  that  skirt  forever  the 
boundary  between  the  known  and  apparent 
world  and  the  glad  realms  of  poetry  and  conjec 
ture. 

There  is  something  magical  on  every  page  of 
it. 

Doctor  Gumph's  Wonder  Oil  is  almost  a  mir 
acle  by  itself. 

It  is  marvelous  that  the  abdominal  cavity  of 
the  partly  peeled  gentleman  aforesaid  should 
have  such  an  effect  upon  the  constellations — or 
perhaps  it  is  the  constellations  that  affect  him. 


Prefaces 


It  is  wonderful  that  any  one  should  know 
whether  it  is  going  to  rain  or  snow  on  April  27, 
but  Doctor  Gumph  knows  and  tells.  It  is  in 
credible  that  the  moon  should  have  been 
weighed,  but  its  weight  is  printed  on  page  27, 
between  Mother  Shipton's  Prophecy  and  a  rec 
ipe  for  preserving  watermelon  rind. 

Science,  here,  is  the  fellow  and  the  com- 
'panion  of  song;  we  give  a  hand  to  each  and 
follow  with  an  innocent  spirit  and  they  conduct 
us  to  a  place  where  the  veil  is  so  thin  that  we 
can  peep  through  and  catch  a  glimpse  of  Na 
ture  at  her  occult  work. 

But  we  must  be  pure  in  heart  and  put  sophis 
tication  from  us,  even  as  the  Percivals  and  Gala- 
hads  who  sought  for  the  Grail.  No  scoffer 
could  follow  a  tablespoonful  of  Doctor 
Gumph's  Wonder  Oil  down  through  the  esoph 
agus  and  into  the  stomach  and  out  through  the 
pylorus  and  watch  it  at  its  wizard  work  of  creat 
ing  a  new  duodenum  out  of  nothing.  These  in 
ductions  into  the  esoteric,  these  glances  at  cre 
ation  in  a  lyric  mood,  are  only  for  eyes  that  have 
not  been  filmed  over  with  the  horn  of  cynicism. 


Preface  to  Old  Doctor  Gumph' s  Almanac 

The  minds  nourished  exclusively  upon  Alma 
nacs  such  as  this  of  Old  Doctor  Gumph  should 
be  full  of  variety  and  delight.  Astronomy  came 
out  of  astrology,  chemistry  came  out  of  al 
chemy,  and  they  are  forever  striving  to  escape 
from  the  prosaic  and  return  to  the  untram- 
meled  state  whence  they  came.  Old  Doctor 
Gumph  likes  to  encourage  them.  Science,  in 
the  hands  of  Old  Doctor  Gumph,  is  not  labo 
rious  and  exact  and  uninteresting;  he  perpetu 
ates  old  legends  and  creates  new  ones.  The 
secret  of  his  Wonder  Oil  for  Man  and  Beast 
was  told  him  by  a  dying  gypsy,  who  strayed  into 
his  camp  in  the  Everglades,  and  the  formula 
had  been  handed  down  by  word  of  mouth  for 
scores  of  generations;  the  recipe  was  known  to 
the  Egyptian  priests  four  thousand  years  ago, 
and  without  the  Wonder  Oil  to  heal  their  bruis 
es  and  harden  their  muscles  and  correct  their 
digestive  systems  the  workmen  of  Khufu  would 
never  have  been  able  to  build  the  great  pyra 
mid.  Later,  Doctor  Gumph  hints,  it  played  an 
important  part  in  the  Eleusinian  Mysteries. 

Old  Doctor  Gumph  is  a  liar,  and  yet  it  is  safe 
12S 


Prefaces 


to  plant  beans  when  he  tells  you  to  plant  them, 
for  that  bit  of  lore  actually  was  handed  down 
from  the  priestly  scientists  of  old  Egypt,  who 
said  they  got  it  from  Osiris. 

There  is  something  in  humanity  that  always 
leaps  up  and  believes  again  at  the  bidding  of 
spells  and  charms  and  incantations;  and  this  is 
a  true  instinct,  for  the  incantation  is  an  attempt 
to  sing  in  tune  with  the  vaster  rhythms  and  the 
tidal  moods  of  the  creating  universe.  So,  we 
say,  the  mind  nourished  exclusively  upon  Doc- 
tor  Gumph's  Almanac  should  be  a  more  inter 
esting  and  companionable  mind  than  the  one 
cultivated  by  some  of  the  modern  dogmatists  of 
science  who  jeer  at  the  imagination. 

We  never  knew  but  one  such  person. 

This  was  a  woman  who  lived  in  a  little  house 
in  the  woods  about  a  mile  from  a  small  town 
in  the  middle  West,  and  the  woods  were  full  of 
her  children.  She  had  buried  three  husbands, 
and  she  used  to  sit  in  the  doorway  of  her  cottage 
and  smoke  her  corncob  pipe  and  look  at  their 
graves,  which  were  in  a  row  among  a  clump  of 
hazel  a  little  way  from  her  door,  and  speculate 


Preface  to  Old  Doctor  Gumph3  s  Almanac 

upon  life  and  death  and  the  world  and  the 
weather  and  husbands,  and  whether  any  one 
would  ever  marry  her  again.  All  her  reading 
had  been  almanacs;  she  had  never  read  any 
thing  else,  and  every  Saturday  she  went  to  town 
and  searched  the  counters  of  the  two  drugstores 
for  new  ones.  Old  Doctor  Gumph  was  her  fa 
vorite,  but  her  mind  was  open;  she  read  them  all. 
She  loved  the  striking  words  in  the  pam 
phlets,  and  she  had  named  her  eighteen  children 
from  them.  There  was  Zodiac,  a  girl,  and  the 
eldest,  known  familiarly  as  Zody;  there  were 
Cartilage  and  Anthrax  and  Peruna,  and  Epider 
mis;  there  was  Whitsuntide  and  Pellagra  and 
Gumph  and  Pisces;  there  were  Perihelion  and 
Tonsilitis  and  Everglade  and  Oppodeldoc  and 
the  twins,  Total  Eclipse  and  Partial  Eclipse, 
and  there  was  poor  little  Lunar,  who  had  some 
thing  the  matter  with  his  eyes,  and  who,  al 
though  he  was  four  years  old,  could  not  walk, 
and  was  dragged  about  everywhere  on  a  sort 
of  sled  made  of  barrel  staves  by  Capricorn  and 
Peroxide. 

125 


Prefaces 


Mrs.  Akely  loved  these  names;  but  she  had 
found  a  name  that  she  loved  better  than  them 
all,  and  she  would  sit  and  smoke  her  pipe  and 
wish  for  another  child  that  she  might  name  him 
Cerebellum.    But  it  did  not  seem  likely  that  she 
would  marry  again,  for  she  was  no  longer  young 
and  she  was  not  attractive;  she  habitually  neg 
lected  her  personal  appearance,  using  snuff  as 
well  as  smoking  tobacco.     She  bore  her  grief 
and  disapppintment  as  well  as  she  could,  but  it 
ached  her  within,  and  all  her  wise  and  whole 
some  talk  of  the  weather  and  the  Seven  Won 
ders  of  the  World  and  love  philters  and  the  ef 
fect  of  the  moon  upon  young  plants  and  the 
magic  properties  of  Gumph's  Oil  was  uttered 
through  an  almost  palpable  atmosphere  of  wist 
ful  and  hopeless  longing.     How  many  of  these 
balked   and  pathetic  figures  there    are  in  the 
world ! 

Doctor  Gumph— Old  Doctor  Gumph!— 
what  a  mind  he  has!  If  he  had  not  been  a 
great  scientist  he  would  have  been  a  great  Sun 
day  Editor! 


Preface  to  a  Book  of 
Paragraphs 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Paragraphs 

SOLOMON,  the  first  Paragrapher  of  whom  we 
have  authentic  record — and,  indeed,  one  of  the 
best  of  us — got  more  fun  out  of  it  than  any 
one  of  us  ever  has  since. 

For  Solomon  was  King  in  Jerusalem. 

When  Solomon  produced  a  quip  of  which  he 
was  especially  proud  he  would  have  it  graved 
on  a  tablet  of  brass  five  cubits  square,  and  it 
would  be  set  over  against  the  base  of  one  of  the 
two  pillars  that  were  before  the  temple.  If  if 
was  a  serious  paragraph  it  would  be  set  over 
against  the  right  hand  pillar,  Jachin,  and  if  it 
was  a  humorous  paragraph  it  would  be  set  over 
against  the  left  hand  pillar,  which  was  called 
Boaz.  And  if  the  people  saw  something  on 
Boaz  they  knew  it  was  to  be  laughed  at,  and 
they  laughed.  In  the  course  of  time  it  became 
the  custom  about  Jerusalem  when  a  man  had 


Prefaces 


said  something  especially  witty  to  remark: 
"That  is  one  on  Boaz." 

Having  produced  his  Quip  and  set  up  the 
brazen  tablet  against  Boaz,  the  King  would 
send  out  Asaph,  Heman  and  Jeduthun,  and 
their  sons  and  their  brethren,  arrayed  in  fine 
linen,  with  cymbals  and  psalteries  and  harps, 
and  with  them  a  hundred  and  twenty  Levites 
sounding  upon  trumpets;  and  this  procession 
winding  through  the  streets  of  the  city  was  sure 
to  attract  a  crowd.  Asaph,  Heman  and  Jedu- 
thun,  halting  at  each  of  the  busiest  corners, 
would  announce,  after  an  alarum  and  flourish  of 
trumpets: 

"Behold,  O  Israel,  it  hath  pleased  thy  King, 
yea  even  Solomon,  thy  King,  to  write  for  thee 
an  exceedingly  clever  Paragraph.  It  srtteth 
over  against  the  pillar  Boaz,  for  the  King  is 
good;  out  of  his  loving  kindness  hath  he  caused 
the  Quip  to  be  placed  upon  the  pillar  Boaz,  that 
his  people  may  read  and  rejoice  thereat.  There 
fore,  assemble  at  the  pillar  Boaz,  and  rejoice 
with  exceeding  great  mirth,  and  praise  the  King, 
yea,  even  Solomon,  thy  King;  out  of  thy  mouths 
130 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Paragraphs 

laugh,  and  with  a  great  noise  of  laughter  make 
the  earth  to  shake,  lest  an  evil  thing  befall  thee ; 
lest  plague  and  pestilence  seize  upon  the  land 
and  the  King  rage  amongst  his  loving  people 
with  fire  and  sword.  Get  thee  to  the  pillar 
Boaz,  for  thy  King  would  have  thee  merry." 

And  then  the  procession  would  go  on  to  the 
next  corner. 

Solomon  would  sit  upon  the  throne  of  ivory, 
overlaid  with  pure  gold,  which  the  workmen  of 
Hiram  of  Tyre  (the  original  Roycrofter) 
fashioned  for  him — and  which  was  always 
brought  out  and  placed,  on  these  occasions,  be 
tween  the  two  pillars — and  all  Judah  and  Is 
rael  and  Benjamin  would  file  before  him  and 
look  at  the  pillar  Boaz,  and  laugh.  It  was  at 
one  such  affair  that  the  Queen  of  Sheba  re 
marked  to  Solomon : 

"Thou  exceedest  the  fame  that  I  heard. 
Happy  are  thy  men,  and  happy  are  these  thy 
servants." 

The  King,  it  may  be  inferred,  loved  to  have 
the  happiness  of  his  servants  commented  upon, 
for:  "King  Solomon  gave  to  the  Queen  of  Sheba 
131 


Prefaces 


all  her  desire,  whatsoever  she  asked"  .  .  .  She, 
there  is  no  doubt,  had  been  something  of  an 
inspiration  to  him  in  his  writing;  no  doubt  he 
owed  the  tone  and  turn  of  many  a  paragraph  to 
her:  "Neither  (says  an  ancient  Chronicler)  was 
there  any  such  spice  as  the  Queen  of  Sheba  gave 
to  King  Solomon." 

Now  and  then  a  Hittite  or  a  Perizzite,  newly 
from  the  provinces,  unacquainted  with  the  fash 
ionable  jargon  of  Jerusalem,  and  wondering 
what  it  was  all  about,  would  look  at  the  brazen 
plate  set  over  against  the  pillar  Boaz  and  fail 
to  laugh  as  he  passed  by.  He  would  gape,  with 
hanging  bucolic  jaws,  as  he  puzzled  over  the 
Quip,  and  stumble  dully  down  the  street,  scowl 
ing  in  his  perplexity.  Solomon,  indicating  him 
with  his  scepter,  would  murmur  to  the  Captain 
of  the  Guard: 

"There  goeth  one  void  of  understanding; 
yea,  a  fool;  he  hath  not  an  understanding  heart. 
He  hath  not  said  unto  Wisdom,  thou  art  my 
sister!  nor  called  Understanding,  my  kinswom 
an!  He  is  an  abomination  to  my  land;  the 
mouth  of  the  foolish  is  a  present  distraction. 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Paragraphs 

Shall  there  not  be  a  rod  for  the  back  of  him 
that  is  void  of  understanding?  Yea,  and  an  ar 
row  shall  strike  through  his  liver!" 

And  the  Captain  of  the  Guard,  a  man  chosen 
for  his  ability  to  take  a  hint  without  a  kick, 
would  know  what  to  do,  and  would  do  it,  mut 
tering:  "Good  understanding  giveth  favor;  but 
the  way  of  the  transgressor  is  hard !" 

It  is  to  be  supposed  that  the  people  of  Jeru 
salem,  even  though  they  admired  and  appreciat 
ed  their  King,  sometimes  would  laugh  only  in 
a  perfunctory  manner,  for  we  find  Solomon  com 
plaining  about  the  twentieth  year  of  his  reign: 
"Even  in  laughter  the  heart  is  sorrowful;  and 
the  end  of  mirth  is  heaviness !"  He  was  a  King 
who  was  always  watching  his  people  to  do  them 
good;  he  was  an  observant  King,  and  he  had 
noticed  that. 

Ah!  that  was  the  life! 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Patterns 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Patterns 

THE  universe  exists;  it  always  has;  it  always 
will;  everything  which  is  now  in  it  was  always 
in  it  and  always  will  be.  It  cannot  escape  itself. 
But  fresh  combinations  of  existing  elements 
are  infinitely  possible.  And  the  universe,  being 
unable  to  commit  suicide  and  end  it  all — and  be 
ing  unable  to  go  crazy  and  forget  itself,  since 
its  craze  would  immediately  be  the  standard  of 
sanity — keeps  very  busy  producing  these  fresh 
combinations  of  its  various  parts  in  order  to 
relieve  the  otherwise  intolerable  tedium  of  being 
the  universe. 

A  little  reflection  on  the  part  of  the  young 
philosopher-poets  who  are  forever  reproaching 
the  universe  for  being  what  it  is  should  induce 
in  those  gentlemen  a  more  liberal  and  lenient  at 
titude.  After  all,  the  universe  is  doing  the  best 
it  can.  Our  feeling  toward  it,  when  we  have 
137 


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taken  it  up  at  all,  in  a  serious  way,  has  always 
been  one  of  pity  rather  than  blame.  We  may 
suggest  reforms  for  the  future,  but  we  are  not 
inclined  to  dwell  harshly  upon  past  mistakes;  it 
is,  on  the  whole,  a  friend  of  ours,  and  we  are 
willing  to  allow  bygones  to  be  bygones ;  we  sel 
dom  think  of  it  without  a  sympathetic  sense  of 
how  far  it  has  come  and  how  far  it  has  to  go 
and  how  tired  it  must  be.  And  it  is  likely  that 
if  it  were  a  part  of  us,  instead  of  our  being  a 
part  of  it,  the  reversal  of  conditions  would  re 
sult  in  no  more  general  satisfaction  than  obtains 
at  present  We  may  add,  in  passing,  that  this 
continuing  kindliness  of  ours  with  regard  to  the 
universe  is  all  the  more  creditable  to  us  since 
the  universe  has  never  yet  unbent  so  far  as  to 
show  us  a  manifestation  of  reciprocal  good  na 
ture;  it  gives  us  everything  we  desire  but  com 
pliments;  it  is  a  friend,  but  an  austere  friend. 
But  we  are  not  complaining;  it  is  intensely  occu 
pied;  from  center  to  circumference  it  is  wearily 
or  feverishly  busy.  (If  it  has  a  circumference; 
we  can  never  think  of  its  having  one  without 
wondering  what  is  outside  of  the  circumference; 
138 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Patterns 

and  it  is  equally  discouraging  to  the  mind  to 
try  to  think  of  it  as  not  having  one.  This  is  a 
matter,  however,  which  we  propose  to  consider 
earnestly  in  a  little  essay  to  be  entitled  the 
"Preface  to  a  Book  of  Hypodermic  Needles.") 
Our  reflections  upon  the  universe,  we  may  as 
well  state  here,  sprang  from  the  contemplation 
of  a  Book  of  Patterns.  The  patterns  set  us 
to  thinking  about  the  shapes  of  things  in  gen 
eral,  and  why  things  are  the  shapes  they  are, 
and  from  that,  by  easy  gradations,  we  ap 
proached  a  mood  of  wonder  as  to  the  shape  of 
the  universe  itself.  We  decided  that  it  is  spher 
ical.  We  do  not  know  how  we  know  it  is 
spherical;  but  we  defy  you  to  say  over  and  over 
to  yourself,  rapidly  and  steadily  for  thirty  min 
utes,  that  the  universe  is  spherical,  and  then 
think  of  it  as  being  any  other  shape.  That  is 
our  dogma :  The  Universe  Is  Spherical ;  we  shall 
be  at  no  pains  to  impose  it  upon  you ;  we  merely 
point  out  to  you  how  you  may  impose  it  upon 
yourself,  if  you  wish;  and  the  wish  to  receive 
any  dogma  must  necessarily  precede  its  accep- 
139 


Prefaces 


tance.  This  hint  as  to  dogma  we  throw  out 
gratuitously  to  those  who  are  thinking  of  start 
ing  new  religions  or  popularizing  old  ones. 
Make  your  dogma  attractive  at  the  start,  and 
do  not  change  it  too  readily;  yet,  if  you  must 
change  it,  change  it  courageously.  No  dogma 
lasts  as  long  as  the  spiritual  necessity  which  pro 
duces  all  dogmas;  every  dogma  has  its  day.  If 
it  ever  occurs  to  us  that  the  universe  is  not 
spherical  after  all,  we  shall  publicly  testify  to 
our  change  of  belief. 

This  spherical  universe,  then,  which  we  are 
presenting  to  your  consideration — we  hope  not 
for  the  first  time — is  forever  busily  engaged  in 
working  up  the  same  old  parts  of  itself  into 
new  combinations,  new  shapes,  new  forms,  be 
cause  it  must  keep  interested  in  something  and 
can't  die.  No  new  stuff,  whether  spiritual  stuff 
or  material  stuff — if  matter  is  anything  but 
spirit  that  has  bumped  around  till  it  got  coars 
ened  and  calloused — no  new  stuff  is  available  to 
the  universe,  and  so  what  we  call  the  process  of 
creation  consists  of  what  Browning  meant  when 
he  had  Abt  Vogler  say : 
140 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Patterns 

"Out  of  three  sounds  .  .  .  not  a 
fourth  sound  but  a  star." 

To  what  extent  gods  participate  personally  in 
this  process  of  creation  is  a  problem  that  will 
likely  have  to  wait  for  solution  until  we  write 
another  essay  to  be  entitled  "Preface  to  a  Book 
of  Court  Plaster."  But  we  should  say,  offhand, 
that  gods  do  not  bother  much  with  the  details. 
The  one  thing  more  interesting  than  making 
things  would  be  to  make  things  make  them 
selves.  For  instance,  the  gods  at  the  present  day 
are  making  man  make  himself.  As  Hermione 
herself  has  remarked,  so  often  and  so  feelingly, 
"What  would  the  human  race  be  without  evolu 
tion  ?" 

But  we  intended,  using  the  Book  of  Pat 
terns  as  a  jumping-off  place,  to  write  some 
thing  about  Art,  and  Form.  And  we  have 
strayed  into  religion  and  science,  as  so  many 
people  do  who  talk  about  Art ;  perhaps  the  three 
are  one. 

Form  is  all  there  is  to  Art.  Art  is  creation; 
Creation  is  merely  combining  old  parts  of  the 
universe  into  new  shapes;  the  only  new  thing 
141 


Prefaces 


that  Art  can  bring  to  the  universe  is  a  new 
Form;  when  gods  and  men  create  their  souls 
sweat  with  the  ecstatic  agony  of  the  process  and 
the  sweat  dribbles  into  the  created  thing  and 
makes  it  live;  without  this  sweat  nothing  gets 
made,  whether  it  is  an  avatar,  a  poem  or  a 
world;  unless  this  soul-sweat  gets  into  it  (divine 
effluvia!)  the  avatar  or  the  poem  or  the  world 
amounts  to  nothing  much;  unless  it  has  a  Form 
to  get  into  the  sweat  of  the  soul  is  in  vain;  it 
must  have  a  Form  to  act  upon  and  through. 
Some  of  the  painters  and  poets  mixed  up  with 
the  unew"  movements — vers  libre,  cubism,  and 
that  sort  of  thing,  are  really  seeking  new  forms. 
More  of  them  are  trying  to  escape  from  Form 
altogether  and  still  have  Art.  The  latter  imag 
ine  a  vain  thing.  It  can't  be  done.  We  have  in 
terrogated  the  universe,  and  we  say  so.  ... 
We  intended  to  develop  that  one  profoundly 
original  idea  into  an  entire  essay,  but  we  get  off 
on  the  wrong  foot  again.  It  will  have  to  wait  for 
proper  elaboration  and  particular  application 
until  we  can  get  around  to  writing  our  uPreface 
to  the  Collected  Poems  of  Fothergil  Finch." 


Preface  to  the  Works  of 
Billy  Sunday 


Preface  to  the  Works  of  Billy  Sunday 

WE  have  received,  in  connection  with  some  re 
marks  we  published  in  a  New  York  paper  con 
cerning  Billy  Sunday,  the  preacher,  several  let 
ters  asking  why  we  object  to  him. 

"Even  if  he  is  lacking  in  taste,"  one  of  them 
says,  "don't  you  think  he  is  doing  good?" 

We  do  not.  And  we  are  not  greatly  con 
cerned  about  his  lack  of  taste.  We  are  not 
shocked  because  he  uses  slang;  slang  may  be  the 
vehicle  of  genuine  convictions.  Nor  do  we 
worry  about  the  amount  of  money  he  makes. 
Nor  have  his  free  and  easy  "conversations  with 
God,"  to  be  quite  candid,  particularly  repelled 
us;  for  we  can  imagine  a  kind  of  person  who 
145 


Prefaces 


might  so  "converse"  with  God  very  seriously 
and  sincerely,  and  therefore  not  offensively. 

Our  detestation  of  what  he  is  doing  goes 
deeper  than  his  surfaces  and  manners;  it  goes 
to  the  essential  spirit  of  the  man  as  revealed  in 
his  continual,  morbid  emphasis  on  the  idea  of 
Hell. 

The  word  Hell  rings  through  his  sermons 
like  a  clanging  tocsin.  It  seems  never  to  be  far 
from  his  tongue.  The  thought  of  Hell  appears 
to  be  ever  present  in  his  mind.  Fear,  fear  of 
Hell,  is  the  chief  motif  of  his  performance.  The 
sense  of  Hell  as  a  waiting,  reaching,  creeping, 
enveloping,  concrete  thing  he  deliberately  im 
plants  in  the  minds  of  his  hearers.  Directly  or 
indirectly,  but  artfully  and  assiduously,  he  fos 
ters  the  growth  of  this  implanted  fear  until  it 
bears  its  crop  of  hysteria.  There  is  a  smack  of 
relish  goes  with  his  utterance  of  his  threats  and 
warnings;  this  crude,  effective  psychologist  of 
terror  knows  his  power  and  exults  in  the  exer 
cise  of  it. 

If  we  were  a  preacher  of  any  sort,  and  a  man 
came  to  us  and  said  he  wished  to  become  a  mem- 
146 


Preface  to  the  Works  of  Billy  Sunday 

her  of  our  church  solely  because  he  was  afraid 
of  going  to  Hell,  we  would  not  feel  any  great 
satisfaction  or  exultation;  it  would  not  seem  to 
us  that  our  creed  had  greatly  triumphed.  We 
might  feel,  indeed,  that  Hell  had  frightened  a 
soul  away  from  it;  but  we  would  not  feel  so 
sure  that  Heaven  had  attracted  one  to  it.  A 
man  that  is  merely  saved  from  Hell  is  only  half 
saved;  he  has  to  work  his  way  to  Heaven  yet; 
and  he  will  not  work  his  way  thither  because  he 
is  impelled  by  fear. 

To  come  to  it  briefly  and  directly,  fear  is  the 
most  base  and  ignoble  of  motives.  Men  may  be 
frightened  into  conformity,  but  never  into  vir 
tue.  We  insult  all  the  saints  of  all  the  creeds  if 
we  suppose  that  they  sneaked  and  scurried  into 
their  Heavens  with  the  curs  of  terror  snapping 
at  their  heels.  There  are  many  myths  concern 
ing  deity  incarnate,  but  the  instinct  of  humanity 
has  always  been  too  sound  to  imagine  a  Jesus  or 
a  Prometheus  whose  courage  faltered. 

The  creeds  that  have  endured  have  endured 
because  of  the  truth  in  them;  and  this  truth  has 
always  been  a  courage  about  life  on  earth  and 
147 


Prefaces 


a  high  thought  concerning  the  ultimate  destiny 
of  the  spirit.  Fiends  have  not  prodded  us  up 
the  difficult  ascents  of  time,  but  our  godlike  men 
and  heroes  have  gone  before  and  beckoned,  and 
the  spark  of  divinity  in  our  dust  has  flared  up 
and  we  have  struggled  after  them. 

To  put  the  accent  upon  fear,  in  dealing  with 
human  souls,  is  to  spread  the  cult  of  that  from 
which  we  should  strive  to  rescue  men;  it  is  to 
shove  men  backward  into  the  jungles  of  their 
racial  childhood;  it  degrades  the  intellect  and 
deforms  the  spirit. 

But  tell  them  confidently  of  a  high  and  noble 
destiny,  worth  striving  after  for  its  own  sake, 
and  those  who  have  fuel  in  them  kindle.  Nor 
is  it  any  sordid  bribe  of  joy  that  will  truly  awak 
en  them ;  their  real  struggle  is  to  be,  and  not  to 
gain,  when  they  have  discerned  in  a  Christ  or  a 
Buddha  the  thing  they  wished  to  be  they  have 
needed  no  other  bribe;  sacrifices  have  not  re 
pelled  them,  the  austerities  of  the  way  have  not 
daunted  them ;  they  have  striven  and  they  have 
failed,  but  they  still  have  striven.  They  will 
always  be  thrilled  with  the  high  romance  of  this 
148 


reface  to  the  Works  of  Billy  Sunday 


eternal  battle.  Appeal  to  their  fears,  cultivate 
their  fears,  encourage  their  fears,  play  upon 
their  fears:  all  that  is  easy  enough  to  do,  and 
they  can  be  set  milling  like  cattle  by  it;  never 
theless,  however  it  may  excite  them  emotionally, 
spiritually  it  is  disintegrating  and  debasing. 

This  unceasing  talk  of  Hell  is  iniquitous, 
and  the  reek  of  it  is  an  abomination  beneath  the 
clean  and  friendly  sun;  it  is  the  last  gabbling 
echo  of  the  silly  tales  we  gibbered  when  we 
were  blue-lipped  apes  back  yonder  in  the  gray 
dawn  of  time  ;  and  one  day  it  will  fall  on  silence  ; 
there  will  come  a  language  in  which  the  thing  is 
not.  As  skulls  grow  broader,  so  do  creeds.  It 
is  not  the  devils  we  create  from  our  fears  and 
weaknesses  that  help  us;  it  is  our  bolder 
thoughts  that  succor  and  sustain,  our  bolder 
thoughts,  returning  from  communion  with  the 
gods  we  sent  them  out  into  the  unknown  to  find 
or  make. 


Preface  to  a  Calendar 


Preface  to  a  Calendar 

IN  a  former  preface  we  had  something  to  say 
about  the  shape  of  the  universe.  We  estab 
lished  the  fact,  we  believe,  that  it  is  spherical. 
Having  thus  said  all  that  it  is  essential  to  say 
about  Space,  let  us  take  up  Time  in  a  serious 
way  and  see  what  can  be  made  of  it. 

We  will  deal  more  particularly  with  Future 
Time.  It  is  difficult  to  discuss  the  Present,  be 
cause  it  will  not  hold  still  long  enough.  As  for 
the  Past,  great  portions  of  it  lie  open  to  the  view 
of  all  men;  they  see  it  differently,  and  anything 
we  might  say  about  it  would  be  sure  to  start  an 
argument.  It  is  not  our  purpose,  in  these  pref 
aces,  to  argue  with  our  readers;  we  merely  in 
tend  to  shout  things  at  them  and  run  on. 

The  most  interesting  question  with  regard  to 
the  Future  is  whether  it  exists  already,  or 
153 


Prefaces 


whether  it  has  not  yet  been  created.  Our  own 
opinion  is  that  a  great  deal  of  the  Future  exists 
already,  and  that  it  has  not  yet  caught  up  with 
us. 

Or,  to  put  it  another  way,  Past,  Present  and 
Future  exist  simultaneously  in  different  parts  of 
the  same  solar  system. 

Let  us  say  that  it  takes  eight  thousand  years 
for  a  ray  of  sunlight  to  travel  from  the  sun  to 
this  earth. 

We  do  not  know  exactly  how  long  it  does 
take.  We  wish  we  did,  for  we  like  to  be  accu 
rate  even  in  these  trivial  details.  There  is  a 
book  in  the  house  that  might  tell  us.  But  we 
have  just  moved.  And  some  confounded  sliding 
arrangement  at  the  side  of  the  baby's  crib  was 
broken  in  the  move.  That  side  of  the  crib  is 
now  propped  off  the  floor  with  twenty  or  thirty 
books.  The  book  that  tells  exactly  the  distance 
from  the  sun  to  the  earth  and  the  length  of  time 
it  takes  a  ray  of  light  working  union  hours  to 
go  that  distance  is  one  of  those  particular  books. 
We  would  rather  (great  as  is  our  passion  for 
exactitude)  never  know  the  facts  than  risk  wak- 
154 


Preface  to  a  Calendar 


ing  the  baby  by  trying  to  get  the  book.*  Even 
in  neighborhoods  where  we  are  known  it  has 
been  whispered  about  that  no  child  would  cry 
like  that  unless  his  parents  deliberately  tortured 
him  throughout  the  night.  And  in  a  new  neigh 
borhood  .  .  . 

Let  us  say  that  it  takes  eight  thousand  years 
for  a  ray  of  light  to  travel  from  the  sun  to  the 
earth.  The  light  that  makes  this»day  to-day  left 
the  sun  centuries*  before  dog-faced  Agamemnon 
launched  his  Grecian  barks  or  Hector  was  a  pup 
at  Troy.  A  million  days  that  we  know  not  yet 
are  already  in  existence  and  on  their  way  to  us, 
carrying  with  them  their  light  and  heat  and  the 
germs  of  their  events,  since  all  life  is  from  the 
sun.  A  day  that  is  four  thousand  years  within 
our  Future  is  four  thousand  years  within  the 
sun's  Past;  the  sun  got  rid  of  it,  threw  it  at  us, 
that  many  years  ago ;  half  way  between  the  sun 
and  the  earth  that  day  speeds  merrily  along, 
making  a  brief  Present  wherever  it  passes,  but 

*We  have  since  found  the  book  and  learned  that  our 
figures  are  astonishingly  incorrect.  But  the  principle  re 
mains  the  same. 

155 


Prefaces 


we  will  not  be  here  when  it  arrives.  By  the 
sun's  time  you  and  we,  and  the  infant  phenome 
non  across  the  hall  reposing  in  such  blessed  un- 
sophistication  above  two  dozen  second  hand  vol 
umes  of  encyclopedia  full  of  entirely  immaterial 
knowledge,  have  been  dead  nearly  eight  thou 
sand  years. 

One  may  have  been  dead  that  long,  of  course, 
and  still  feel  young  and  strong  occasionally; 
there  is  some  comfort  in  that.  And  always,  to 
remember  that  one  has  been  dead  that  long,  is 
a  salutary  check  upon  human  vanity.  It  should 
give  us — (we  always  try  to  get  some  moral  re 
flection  into  these  prefaces) — it  should  give  us 
a  more  kindly  fellow  feeling  for  such  dusty 
celebrities  as  the  Mummy  of  Rameses,  the  Pilt- 
down  Skull  and  Senator  La  Follette.  If  it  dis 
courages  ambition,  it  also  discourages  discour 
agement.  Since  the  sun  threw  off  o-ur  death  day 
nearly  eight  thousand  years  ago,  it  is  scarcely 
worth  while  worrying  about  a  future  event  that 
is  so  far  in  the  past;  we  will  be  sticking  around 
somewhere  when  said  death  day  reaches  us,  but 
156 


Preface  to  a  Calendar 


no  one  need  be  expected  to  act  as  if  he  found 
any  news  in  it  when  it  gets  here. 

This  Future  that  rushes  upon  us,  cries  pres 
ently  and  confusingly  in  our  ears  and  is  gone  be 
fore  we  can  collect  our  wits  to  answer — where 
does  it  go  to  then?  The  day  existed;  it  over 
took  us;  it  went  by;  does  it  still  exist  some 
where  ?  It  came  to  earth ;  it  left  earth ;  perhaps 
it  took  something  as  it  went  by — and  is  it  now, 
with  what  it  took,  traversing  the  next  planet  to 
the  west  as  you  steer  toward  the  cosmic  jumping- 
off  place?  Does  the  day,  with  what  we  gave 
the  day,  await  us  ?  And  may  we  overtake  it  by 
a  sudden  acceleration  of  speed,  such  as  a  soul 
must  manifest  when  it  pops  hot  and  light  and 
eager  out  of  a  body? — and  may  we  live  in  the 
warm  middle  and  tingling  presence  of  that  day 
again?  It  seems  altogether  possible  to  us  that 
when  we  shill  through  the  pearly  gates  we  may 
find  some  of  these  days  sitting  up  with  the  lights 
all  turned  on  waiting  for  us,  like  commuters' 
wives. 

Now  and  then  we  have  the  feeling  that  a  cer 
tain  action  has  been  performed  before;  we  are 
157 


Prefaces 


arrested  in  mid-gesture  with  the  consciousness 
that  the  situation  is  not  new  to  us ;  it  comes  over 
us  with  a  sudden  eeriness  that  we  are  repeating 
a  particular  role;  many  persons  are  very  subject 
to  such  uncanny  seizures.  Perhaps  these  strange 
moments  are  stray  bits  of  days  that  our  souls 
have  lived  through  previously;  bits  that  have 
been  broken  off  somehow  and  are  left  lying 
about  loose;  they  went  by  us  and  then  they 
lagged,  and  now  we  have  caught  up  with  them 
again. 

There  isn't,  really,  any  such  thing  as  Time. 
If  there  were  there  couldn't  be  eternity.  Past, 
Present  and  Future  are  all  alike,  all  one.  There 
is  no  time.  There  are  only  imperishable  events, 
in  the  midst  of  which  we  flutter  and  change  to 
something  else  and  flutter  on  again.  The  Cos 
mos —  (poor  thing!) — didn't  begin  and  it  can't 
end. 

Which  is  one  advantage  a  preface  has  over 
the  cosmos. 


Preface  to  a  Study  of  the  Cur- 
rent  Stage 


Preface  to  a  Study  of  the  Current 
Stage 

I  GAVE  the  boy  who  delivers  the  groceries  a 
ticket  to  a  war  melodrama  recently.  A  few 
days  later  he  described  the  play  to  me.  He  de 
scribed  it  as  if  he  were  a  discoverer. 

"It  was  the  darndest  thing  you  ever  saw,"  he 
said.  "You  get  what  it's  about  easier  than  you 
do  a  regular  show,  on  account  of  them  talking 
it  out.  But  it  seemed  kind  of  funny  at  first  to 
hear  them  chewing  the  rag  like  that.  It  didn't 
seem  real,  till  you  got  used  to  it,  like  a  regular 
show  does." 

uWhat  do  you  mean  by  a  regular  show?"  I 
asked  him,  puzzled. 

He  meant,  I  learned,  the  movies.  I  cross- 
questioned  him.  He  has  been  gomg  to  the 
movies  every  time  he  could  get  hold  of  a  spare 
nickel  for  seven  or  eight  years,  and  he  is  now 
161 


Prefaces 


fifteen.  He  has  been  to  a  few  vaudeville  shows ; 
he  has  seen  a  couple  of  circuses.  But  the  war 
play  was  actually  the  first  spoken  drama  he  had 
ever  attended. 

It  was  a  novelty  to  him.  I  gathered  from 
what  he  said  that  he  felt  like  encouraging  it. 
He  took  a  liberal  attitude  towards  this  new 
thing,  the  spoken  drama.  It  was  quaint,  it 
didn't  move  fast  enough,  it  was  too  long,  too 
many  things  happened  in  one  place,  and  there 
was  an  abiding  strangeness  in  hearing  the  spok 
en  words.  But  on  the  whole  the  queer  experi 
ment  had  made  a  big  hit  with  him. 

"It's  funny,"  he  repeated,  "it's  darned  funny 
to  hear  them  chewing  the  rag  like  that  every 
time  they're  getting  ready  to  do  something.  But 
I  kind  of  liked  it  when  I  got  used  to  it.  Though, 
of  course,"  he  concluded,  "it  ain't  a  regular 
show." 

The  movies  have  been  shown  to  millions  of 
people  during  the  last  ten  years.  They  have 
chased  a  certain  type  of  cheap  melodrama  off 
the  boards.  I  wonder  how  many  thousands, 
how  many  hundreds  of  thousands,  of  people 
162 


Preface  to  a  Study  of  the  Current  Stage 

there  are,  from  twelve  to  twenty  years  old,  who 
regard  them  as  the  "regular  show,"  and  to 
whom  the  spoken  drama  would  be  more  or  less 
of  a  novelty  I 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Safety 
Pins 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Safety  Pins 

HERE  they  are,  four  in  a  row  and  two  rows  to  a 
card,  and  a  dozen  cards  bound  into  a  neat  little 
book  ...  a  Little  Book  of  Diaper  Pins,  of  as 
sorted  sizes,  compiled  by  affectionate  hands.  .  . 
Yes;  Diaper  Pins!  Why  should  we  be  more 
squeamish  about  mentioning  these  little  neces 
sary  things  than  the  women's  magazines?  .  .  . 
When  we  take  our  tone  from  the  women's 
magazines  we  are  certain  we  are  not  offending 
current  taste.  We  have  all  worn  Diaper  Pins ; 
some  of  us  have  adjusted  them  with  care  and 
particularity  about  the  persons  of  our  agitated 
offspring;  some  of  us  hope,  in  our  fatuous  hu 
man  way,  to  stick  them  sentimentally  into  the 
undergarments  of  our  grandchildren  ...  if 
we  are  permitted  to.  Will  we  be  permitted  to? 
We  are  not  sure  whether  this  is  one  of  the 
167 


Prefaces 


privileges  allowed  by  the  ruling  generation  to 
doddering  age,  or  not  Between  the  gruel  of 
infancy  and  the  gruel  of  senility  are  many  years 
of  teeth;  but  before  teeth  come,  and  after  teeth 
depart,  we  act  and  eat  at  the  sufferance  of  those 
who  can  rule  the  roasts  of  life,  and  chew  them. 

All  that  we  know  about  infants  will,  perhaps 
unfortunately,  never  be  published.  But  we  have 
had  a  thought  of  interest  to  Young  Fathers, 
and  we  pass  it  on :  Do  not  resign  your  authority 
over  your  child  too  completely  in  favor  of  the 
Scientific  Managers. 

Some  years  ago  we  became  acquainted  with 
an  Infant  whose  parents  had  tried  everything 
on  him  at  least  once.  He  should  have  been 
bursting  with  health ;  he  had  been  crammed  with 
rules  and  regulations  until  every  time  he  cut  his 
finger  he  bled  theories;  and  yet,  he  was  pallid. 
He  was  wan  as  a  Dickens  Child,  in  Chapter 
Forty-seven,  just  before  the  great  master,  with 
the  light  of  murder  in  his  eyes,  rolls  up  his 
sleeves  to  inflict  a  lingering  death  in  seven  thou 
sand  words  of  bastard  blank  verse. 

It  was  decided  by  his  parents  that  something 
168 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Safety  Pins 

should  be  done  at  once  for  Frederick  ...  or 
"Icky,"  as  he  was  called.  .  .  . 

Our  very  pen  protests;  we  blush  for  the  hu 
man  race,  but  this  unfortunate  young  animal 
was  actually  called  Icky — heaven  help  him !  .  .  . 
We  could  not  invent  the  name  Icky;  only  that 
curious  creature,  a  young  mother,  is  capable 
of  thinking  up  Icky.  .  .  . 

It  was  decided,  we  say,  that  something  should 
be  done  for  Icky  at  once.  Icky  had  gotten  too 
far  away  from  Nature,  somehow.  Icky  would 
have  to  go  Back  to  Nature. 

Young  Icky,  in  short,  would  gain  in  all 
ways  could  he  but  frolic  in  the  dirt,  disport  him 
self  upon  naked  soil,  gambol  gloriously  in  infan 
tile  abandon  upon  real  earth.  Mud  pies,  we  be 
lieve,  were  mentioned,  tentatively.  Icky  was 
to  have  a  debauch  of  wholesomeness. 

We  supposed  that  his  .parents  would  take 
Icky  to  the  beach  and  let  him  play  with  the 
ocean,  or  set  him  down  in  a  park  and  encourage 
him  to  the  pursuit  and  capture  of  his  first  angle 
worm,  or  something  of  the  sort. 

But  no.  Icky  was  not  taken  to  the  dirt.  The 
169 


Prefaces 


dirt  was  brought  to  Icky.  It  was  absolutely 
hygienic  dirt.  All  the  germs  had  been  baked 
out  of  it  in  a  laboratory.  It  had  been  fumi 
gated  and  sterilized  and  made  sanitary  and  anti 
septic.  It  was  clean  dirt. 

There  were  several  bushels  of  it,  and  they 
poured  it  onto  a  big  piece  of  oil  cloth  in  the  hall, 
and  Icky,  appropriately  garbed,  was  set  down 
upon  it. 

"Play,  Icky!"  said  his  mother. 

"Frolic,  Icky!"  said  his  father. 

"Gambol,  Icky!"  said  his  mother. 

And  Icky  wanly  gamboled.  He  was  not  en 
thusiastic,  but  he  played.  He  was  puzzled,  but 
he  is  a  patient  child;  he  has  learned  a  weary 
toleration  of  the  various  fads  to  which  his  par 
ents  subject  him;  he  is  obedient,  and  he  pains 
takingly  frolicked. 

This  first  mad  gambol  of  Icky's  we  were  priv 
ileged  to  witness.  Inquiring  a  few  weeks  later 
as  to  how  Icky  and  Mother  Nature  (that  grand 
old  nurse)  were  getting  along  together,  we 
learned  that  Icky,  the  third  time  over  the  course, 
balked  and  refused  absolutely  to  frisk  at  all. 
170 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Safety  Pins 

The  clean  dirt  was  eventually  thrown  away — - 
out  into  the  back  yard,  with  common,  ordinary 
dirt 

Icky  is  a  peculiarly  ungrateful  child.  In 
spite  of  all  that  his  parents  do  for  him,  in  the 
way  of  Scientific  Management,  he  persists  in 
remaining  pale. 

We  intended  to  limit  ourselves  to  a  few  re 
marks  on  Safety  Pins,  but,  as  usual,  became 
more  interested  in  our  own  digression  than  our 
subject  proper.  The  main  thought  was  this: 
Why  is  a  thing  of  such  potential  deadliness  as 
the  Safety  Pin  still  in  use?  Men  will  have  to 
invent  a  substitute ;  women  never  will,  or  it  had 
been  done  decades  ago.  In  a  future  paper,  to 
be  entitled  "The  Menace  of  the  Mother,"  we 
may  take  up  Safety  Pins  again  .  .  .  in  a  serious 
way. 


Preface  to  the  Novels  of 
Harold  Bell  Wright 


Preface  to  the  Novels  of  Harold  Bell 
Wright 

WE  decided  about  a  year  ago  that  we  would  Get 
Rich  Quick.  As  we  don't  know  anything  in 
particular,  it  was  obvious  from  the  start  that 
we  would  have  to  find  some  method  of  capitaliz 
ing  our  ignorance.  That  naturally  suggested 
writing  a  book. 

It  was  hopeless  for  us  to  attempt  to  write  as 
good  a  book  as  Thackeray  or  Balzac  might  have 
written;  we  had  decided  to  get  rich  quick.  A 
good  book  takes  time  and  thought. 

So  we  decided  to  write  a  poor  book.  We 
were  certain  we  could  do  that.  And  we  went 
and  got  one  of  Harold  Bell  Wright's  books  and 
read  it  just  to  see  how  it  was  done.  Harold 
sells  a  million  copies.  Why  couldn't  we  write 
the  same  sort  of  thing,  and  sign  some  one  else's 
175 


Prefaces 


name  to  it,  and  get  rich,  and  spend  the  rest  of 
our  life  in  a  yacht  writing  poetry  and  corking 
it  up  in  bottles  and  tnrowing  the  bottles  at  the 
mermaids,  and  having  a  good  time  generally? 

But  after  reading  the  book  we  decided  that 
we  couldn't  do  it.  We  can  write  just  as  poorly 
as  Harold  Bell — we  can  write  just  as  poorly 
as  any  one  that  ever  lived — but  we  can't  write 
the  same  kind  of  poor  stuff  that  Harold  Bell 
can. 

It  suddenly  struck  us  that  out  of  all  the  mil 
lions  of  Harold's  readers  we  had  never  met  one 
face  to  face.  We  made  inquiries.  No  one  we 
knew  had  ever  met  a  Harold  Bell  Wright 
reader,  or  had  ever  met  any  one  who  knew  one. 

We  were  piqued.  We  forgot  entirely  about 
getting  rich  quick  in  the  new  interest  that  had 
come  to  us.  We  determined  that  we  would 
meet  a  Harold  Bell  Wright  reader  if  the  pur 
suit  occupied  years  of  o.  .  time.  The  thing  was 
not  impossible.  We  know  two  people  that  read 
Gene  Stratton  Porter. 

Our  deliberate  efforts  were  defeated.  But 
chance,  a  few  months  ago,  flung  the  Harold  Bell 
176 


Preface  to  Novels  of  Harold  Bell  Wright 

Wright  Fan  across  our  path.  He  was  in  a 
smoking  compartment  of  a  train  that  was  get 
ting  away  from  Chicago,  111.,  as  rapidly  as  it 
could,  and  he  was  engaged  in  his  Favorite  Vice 
— he  was  actually  reading  Harold  Bell — when 
we  spotted  him.  We  lighted  a  cigar  and  looked 
out  of  the  window  and  waited  for  things  to  de 
velop.  We  knew  they  would.  A  reader  of 
Harold  Bell  Wright,  in  a  smoking  compart 
ment  with  us,  we  said  to  ourself,  will  certainly 
ask  us  What  Our  Line  Is  within  thirty  min 
utes. 

When  people  in  smoking  compartments  ask 
us  our  line  we  always  say  that  we  have  been  a 
lawyer,  but  are  now  studying  for  the  ministry. 
If  they  still  show  an  interest  in  our  business,  we 
at  once  develop  an  interest  in  their  souls.  On 
several  occasions  we  have  gone  so  far  as  to  con 
vert  people  like  that  to  different  religions. 

This  Harold  Fan  was  a  rather  good  looking 
chap,  better  looking  than  you  are,  likely,  bet 
ter  dressed  than  we  were,  exuding  an  air  of 
prosperity.  One  could  tell  at  a  glance  that  he 
lived  in  Cleveland,  liked  living  there,  believed 
177 


Prefaces 


in  Cleveland's  Destiny,  and  could  tell  you  to 
the  yard  how  many  miles  of  paved  streets  that 
city  has,  and  would  tell  you  in  spite  of  flood,  fire 
and  earthquake. 

Presently  we  saw  his  face  "was  working  with 
emotion" — we  really  aren't  fictionizing,  there 
wouldn't  be  any  point  to  it  if  we  were;  his  face 
was  "working  with  emotion."  And  he  saw  that 
we  had  seen  it  work  with  emotion,  and  held 
out  the  book  toward  us  and  said: 

"Did  you  ever  read  Harold  Bell  Wright?" 

We  said  we  had. 

He  gave  us  a  look  that  said:  "Ah,  then  we 
are  friends  and  brothers !  Let  us  wander,  con 
versationally,  through  the  broad  demesne 
where  Harold  reigns  as  king." 

We  tried  to  return  the  same  sort  of  glance ; 
felt  that  we  had  not  quite  succeeded,  and  made 
a  gallant  effort  to  retrieve  ourself  with  the 
remark: 

"What  you  like  about  him  is  his  Moral 
Sweetness,  isn't  it?" 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "He  gets  himself  into  his 
178 


Preface  to  Novels  of  Harold  Bell  Wright 

books.  My  uncle  knew  him  when  he  was  a 
boy. 

We  got  it  all,  with  dates  and  details.  We  are 
sorry  that  we  can't  remember  it.  But  it  would 
have  been  impolite  to  take  notes.  We  got  Har 
old's  biography.  This  proud  young  man's  fam 
ily  had  known  Harold  from  infancy. 

Even  in  his  cradle  Harold  had  shown  his 
Moral  Worth.  There  were  bumps  on  his  head 
that  indicated  that  his  future  would  be  no  or 
dinary  one.  He  learned  his  letters  with  a  con 
sciousness  that  the  English  language  would  one 
day  be  a  valued  assistant  in  his  task  of  Reform 
ing  Men  through  Literature.  He  saw  Spiritual 
Significance  in  the  multiplication  table  and  Pur 
pose  in  geography.  He  was  a  good  boy;  but 
he  was  more  than  a  good  boy;  he  bore  himself 
with  the  consciousness  that  he  would  fail  moral 
ly  if  he  were  so  selfish  as  to  keep  his  goodness  to 
himself.  .  .  .  He  was  an  Influence  in  his  teens. 

Once  the  proud  young  man's  uncle  met  Har 
old  on  a  lake  steamer.  Our  memory  is  treach 
erous,  but  we  think  that  at  the  moment  Harold 
was  being  a  deckhand.  The  uncle  had  not  seen 
179 


Prefaces 


him  for  several  years.  Harold,  we  gathered, 
was  probably  the  most  moral  and  godly  deck 
hand  who  ever  sailed  our  great  inland  seas.  All 
the  temptations  that  are  almost  hourly  thrown 
in  the  way  of  deckhands  he  resisted  resolutely; 
he  set  his  firm  jaws  and  determined  that  he 
would  not  succumb  to  the  snares  set  for  the  feet 
of  the  deckhand;  the  glittering  palaces  of  lux 
ury  and  pride  which  had  softened  the  moral 
fiber  of  so  many  deckhands  Harold  never  en 
tered.  The  uncle  was  heartened  by  the  talk 
with  Harold. 

Years  pass  by  ...  the  uncle  meets  Harold 
again  .  .  .  not  now  a  deckhand  but  a  force  in 
literature  .  .  .  but  the  same  old  Harold  .  .  . 
not  proud  nor  haughty  .  .  .  and,  mark  you, 
Wealthy.  As  we  have  said  and  sung  so  often, 
it  is  Moral  Worth  that  gets  the  Mazuma. 

And  after  our  talk  with  the  young  man  whose 
uncle  knew  Harold  from  boyhood  we  realized 
more  completely  than  ever  before  why  we  could 
never  get  rich  quick  writing  a  Harold  Book. 
We  don't  have  that  kind  of  Moral  Earnest 
ness.  And  it  can't  be  faked. 
180 


Preface  to  a  Book  of 
Statistics 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Statistics 

STATISTICS  have  always  pleased  us.  They 
thrill  us.  There  is  something  romantic  about 
them.  They  scratch  and  tickle  our  imagination 
till  it  wakes  and  yodels.  A  fact  is  a  fact;  an 
idea  is  merely  an  idea.  Facts  and  ideas  move 
on  prescribed  planes  from  which  they  cannot 
escape.  But  statistics  do  not  necessarily  have 
any  close  connection  with  either  facts  or  ideas. 
At  will  they  skip  over  the  boundary  into  a 
sort  of  fourth  dimensional  land.  And  there 
they  dance  like  the  motes  one  sees  if  one  stares 
at  the  wind  long  enough  so  that  the  little  veins 
in  one's  eyes  become  congested  with  blood  cor- 
p^scles.  There  is  always  the  doubt  as  to  wheth 
er  the  little  motes  are  really  flickering  and  danc 
ing  up  and  down  a  slanting  current  of  sunlit 
air  or  whether  they  are  in  the  eyes.  This  doubt 
makes  it  a  charming  occupation  to  sit  and  watch 
183 


Prefaces 


them  gambol  on  spring  mornings  when  one 
should  be  at  work. 

It  is  so  with  statistics;  we  like  to  wonder 
about  them;  we  look  at  them  and  thrill  and 
speculate  and  doubt  and  conjecture.  But  it  is 
no  joy  to  us  to  know  what  statistics  are  about. 
We  do  not  wish  to  have  them  tied  down  to  any 
specific  subject.  We  love  to  see  them  dart  and 
frolic  through  the  pages  of  great  tomes  just  for 
the  sake  of  the  dance  itself. 

When  we  discover  that  during  the  first  six 
months  of  1912  the  United  States  of  America 
exported  1,395,683  we  do  not  care  to  know  i,- 
395,683  what.  It  might  be  codfish,  it  might  be 
pigs  of  iron;  but  what  is  that  to  us?  Definite- 
ness  stops  the  dance ;  it  gives  us  images  too  bold 
and  concrete;  it  robs  us  of  the  fancy  of  1,395,- 
683  little  motes  whirling  and  swarming  as  they 
rise  from  the  coast  and  fly  out  across  the  Atlan 
tic  with  a  pleasant  whir  and  hum  of  multitudi 
nous  wings. 

As  these  1,395,683  approach  the  Gulf  Stream 
perhaps  they  meet  2,965,355  of  imports  coming 
westward.  It  would  only  ruin  the  picture  if  we 
184 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Statistics 

knew  2,965,355  what.  It  would  give  us  some 
thing  to  think  about;  we  might  become  con 
vinced  of  the  plausibility  of  some  one's  economic 
theory,  perhaps,  and  our  day  would  be  spoiled. 
Statistics,  for  us,  fall  naturally  into  various 
colors.  For  instance,  7,377,777,  whether  it 
stands  for  imports  or  exports,  is  undoubtedly 
red.  But  1,019,901  is  a  pale,  light,  cool,  gray 
ish  blue.  And  can  any  one  doubt  that  525,555,- 
555,555  is  of  a  bright  aggressive  yellow  color, 
and  gives  off  a  high  pitched  note  from  the  rapid 
motion  of  its  myriad  pinions?  There  is  some 
thing  querulous  and  peevish  and  impatient  about 

525>555>555>555>  to°;  we  snall  not  admit  it  into 
the  volume  of  statistics  which  we  are  compiling. 
Hitherto  there  has  been  a  science  of  statis 
tics,  but  no  art.  That  is,  no  avowed  art.  We 
suspect  that  certain  advanced  statisticians  really 
approach  the  subject  as  we  do,  joyfully  and  all 
unshackled.  But  they  pretend  to  be  staid  and 
dry  and  sober.  TneY  have  respectable  positions 
in  the  community  to  maintain.  After  compiling 
several  pages  of  statistics  full  of  sound  and 
color,  just  for  the  sheer  glee  of  reveling  in  sen- 
185 


Prefaces 


sation,  they  become  cowards  and  conceal  their 
glee;  they  write  industrial  and  financial  and  so 
ciological  articles  around  their  lovely  tables  and 
twist  them  into  proving  something  important. 
They  conceal  their  art,  they  muffle  and  smother 
their  finer  impulses  beneath  a  repellent  cloak  of 
science.  They  are  afraid  that  their  toys  will  be 
taken  away  from  them  if  they  play  with  them 
frankly,  so  they  affect  some  sort  of  useful  em 
ployment. 

We  remember  reading  somewhere,  and  it  was 
cited  as  an  example  of  the  mental  twilight  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  that  learned  clerks  and  doctors 
were  accustomed  to  debate  the  question  as  to 
how  many  angels  could  stand  on  the  point  of  a 
needle.  But  these  medieval  disputants  were  not 
stupid  at  all.  They  were  quite  right  to  be  inter 
ested  in  such  things.  They  were  wise  enough 
to  divorce  statistics  from  reality  utterly.  Things 
of  every  sort — all  the  arts  and  philosophies — 
suffer  to-day  because  we  insist  on  connecting 
them  with  a  trivial  reality.  We  try  to  make 
them  prove  something.  We  try  to  set  them  to 
work.  And  definite  proofs  will  always  be  tire- 
186 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Statistics 

some,  and  work  a  thing  to  be  escaped.  People 
are  not  really  enthusiastic  about  having  things 
proved  to  them,  or  about  working;  they  want  to 
have  a  good  time.  And  they  are  quite  right, 
too. 

Once,  in  a  country  town,  we  heard  one  of  the 
village  loafers  make  a  remark  concerning  a 
storekeeper  that  we  have  always  remembered; 
it  seems  to  fit  in  here.  It  was  the  custom,  in  win 
ter  time  at  least,  to  set  a  cigar  box  full  of  smok 
ing  tobacco  on  the  counter  near  the  stove,  and 
those  who  came  in  to  rest  and  get  warm  and 
wonder  if  it  would  be  a  late  spring  and  tell  smut 
ty  stories  and  fry  their  felt  boots  before  the  fire 
helped  themselves  to  this  tobacco  without  mon 
ey  and  without  price.  The  box  was  always  re 
ferred  to  as  uthe  paupers'  box."  One  Mr. 
Dash,  a  merchant,  put  a  stop  to  the  paupers'  box 
in  his  store.  Joe  Blank,  who  had  been  filling 
his  pipe  from  it  for  twenty  years,  arose  and  re 
marked  from  the  depths  of  his  outraged  being: 

"Hennery  Dash,  your  soul  is  so  small  that  if 
they  was  millions  and  millions  of  souls  the  size 
of  yourn  into  a  flea's  belly  them  souls  would  be 
187 


Prefaces 


so  far  apart  they  couldn't  hear  each  other  if 
they  was  to  holler." 

Joe  had  the  mind  of  a  poet.  A  bungler 
would  have  said  exactly  how  many  millions  of 
souls,  would  have  stated  their  exact  size  and 
told  just  how  far  apart  they  were ;  but  Joe  left 
it  vague  and  vast  and  infinitely  small.  A  scient 
ist  would  have  said  too  much  and  spoiled  it; 
not  so  the  artist. 

Statisticians  deal  with  precious,  intangible 
stuff,  with  the  flecks  and  atomies  of  faery — and 
how  few  of  them  dare  rise  to  the  full  possibili 
ties  of  their  medium !  They  are  merely  foolish 
when  they  might  so  readily  achieve  insanity  if 
they  had  but  the  courage  to  be  themselves. 

There  are,  for  instance,  1,345  statisticians  in 
this  land  who  would  know,  if  they  were  laid  end 
to  end,  that  4,988,898,888  is  green  in  color,  a 
deep,  dark  green.  Yet  they  are  all  afraid  to 
stand  forth  like  men  and  say  so;  they  are  afraid 
of  what  people  will  think  of  them.  They  are 
obsessed  with  the  belief  that  materials  are  sig 
nificant,  without  stopping  to  reflect  that,  even 
188 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Statistics 

were  this  so,  significance  would  still  remain  im 
material. 

And  even  if  we  feel  a  chill  of  fear  creeping 
over  us — we  dare  not  keep  on  in  this  vein  any 
longer  or  some  one  will  catch  us  and  make  a  cir 
culation  manager  for  a  newspaper  out  of  us. 


Preface  to  a  Moral  Book  of 
Arithmetic 


Preface  to  a  Moral  Book  of 
Arithmetic 

THE  mathematical  textbook  to  which  this  is 
intended  as  an  introduction  is  not  yet  complet 
ed;  but  when  it  is  completed  it  will  be  different 
from  any  other  treatise  on  arithmetic  in  the 
world.  It  will  have  no  very  large  numbers  in 
it,  for  very  large  numbers  are  not  only  vulgarly 
ostentatious  in  themselves  (and  therefore  of 
fensive  to  persons  of  taste)  but  they  are  im 
moral  as  well. 

There  will  be  a  good  many  y's  in  it  and  a  good 
many  3's.  Sevens  and  3*5  are  attractive  num 
bers.  But  there  will  be  few  8's  and  no  more  6's 
than  are  absolutely  necessary.  The  figure  6  does 
not  please  the  eye  when  written,  nor  does  the 
word  six  please  the  ear  when  spoken.  Five  is  an 
excellent  number  and  5  is  a  quaint  and  not  repel- 
193 


Prefaces 


lent  figure;  4  does  very  well;  i  is  often  impres 
sive;  2  is  always  insignificant;  o,  which  is  the 
gateway  to  the  fourth  dimension,  deserves  a 
separate  treatise  for  that  reason.  And  there  is 
a  kind  of  elegance  about  o.  But  it  is  too  much 
removed  from  life;  there  is  no  passion  about 
it,  somehow.  We  can  admire  o ;  we  can  wonder 
at  it;  we  could  never  love  it,  nor  sin  for  its  sake ; 
neither  would  it  regenerate  us;  it  is  lacking  in 
heat  and  humanity. 

But  7  satisfies  us,  poetically  and  as  a  man. 
It  has  been  well  called  the  Perfect  Number:  all 
times,  all  climes,  all  peoples,  all  literatures, 
have  attempted  to  utter  the  mystic  and  unutter 
able  virtues  of  7.  There  are  Seven  Pleiads  and 
Seven  Sutherland  Sisters,  Seven  Hells  and  Sev 
en  Candles;  from  the  Old  Testament  to  Dun- 
sany's  "Gods  of  the  Mountain"  it  has  been  in 
voked  to  impress  us,  for  it  is  strangely  and  in 
herently  impressive.  The  heavens  declare  its 
glory  and  the  external  and  material  world  falls 
naturally  into  heptagonal  patterns  .  .  .  natu 
rally,  or  magically !  For  it  is  a  magic  number. 
Verse  written  on  a  rhythmic  scheme  which  re- 
194 


Preface  to  a  Moral  Book  of  Arithmetic 

gards  the  occult  properties  of  seven  is  better 
than  any  other  verse ;  and  queer  things  happen 
in  a  seven  handed  poker  game  that  we  have 
never  seen  happen  anywhere  else. 

Personally,  we  never  had  anything  but  good 
luck  in  our  life,  and  we  feel  that  we  always  shall 
be  lucky,  and  that  is  because  there  are  seven 
letters  in  our  last  name;  and  when  we  die,  at 
the  age  of  105,  we  shall  go  and  dwell  for  a 
while  on  the  planet  Saturn,  which  is  ringed  with 
seven  rings,  each  ring  being  of  a  gorgeous 
color;  and  we  shall  wear  a  wonderful  coat  of 
the  seven  primary  colors  and  twang  a  seven- 
stringed  harp,  and  to  the  measured  twanging 
of  that  harp  all  the  people  we  didn't  like  will  be 
compelled  to  jump  through  and  over  those 
rings.  This  is  no  random  prophecy,  we  should 
state ;  it  was  settled  ages  ago ;  it  cost  us  two  dol 
lars,  if  remembrance  does  not  fail,  to  learn  our 
destiny,  and  the  black-browed  lady  to  whom  we 
paid  the  money — her  name  was  Isis,  she  said, 
and  she  was  once  an  Egyptian  princess — also 
added  that  we  would  travel  a  great  deal  and  it 
might  be  well  for  us  to  beware  of  a  dark 
195 


Prefaces 


gentleman.  We  intend  to  take  Isis  up  more  in 
detail  when  we  write  our  "Preface  to  a  Dream 
Book." 

But  this  (though  it  thrills  us)  is  too  personal, 
perhaps,  to  be  widely  interesting.  Our  own 
private  superstitions,  and  mere  questions  of 
taste,  and  speculations  concerning  magic,  would 
not  of  themselves  have  been  sufficient  to  induce 
us  to  write  our  new  arithmetic. 

There  are,  as  we  have  hinted,  Moral  reasons 
for  the  Work.  It  is  an  Arithmetic  With  a  Pur 
pose.  It  is  an  Arithmetic  from  which  large 
numbers  will  be  excluded;  it  is  an  Arithmetic 
which  is  intended  to  be  the  beginning  of  a  prop 
aganda  against  large  numbers. 

For  large  numbers  have  an  odd  effect  upon 
the  mind  of  man.  Briefly  and  bluntly,  they 
make  him  wicked.  They  seduce  his  spirit  into 
all  manner  of  vainglory  and  irreverence  and 
megalomania.  A  statesman  sees  that  his  coun 
try  has  a  population  of  16,304,129  persons, 
and  he  pores  over  the  figures  until  they  induct 
him  by  an  evil  magnetism  into  dreams  of  armies 
196 


Preface  to  a  Moral  Book  of  Arithmetic 

and  conquest  and  empire.  A  bank  clerk  reads 
that  Croesus  was  worth  $86,924,066.29,  and  he 
wrecks  his  life  and  perhaps  his  country  trying 
to  get  twice  as  much;  a  sheepherder  discovers 
that  Norval  fed  868,466  sheep  upon  the  Gram 
pian  Hills  and  is  no  longer  a  simple  shepherd, 
but  a  fevered  lunatic  burning  with  the  notion 
that  he  must  become  the  Napoleon  of  the  Mut 
ton  Chop ;  a  scientist  finds  that  a  brother  scien 
tist  has  counted  138,748,666  germs  clinging  to 
the  .053071098^  part  of  a  square  inch  of  bron 
chitis,  and  he  sets  out  to  discover  or  invent  a 
disease  that  will  assay  a  billion  bacilli  to  the 
square  inch,  using  up  hundreds  of  guinea  pigs 
in  the  process.  Large  numbers  exert  a  malign 
influence  upon  the  imagination;  something  un 
social  and  sinister  and  detached  from  reality 
and  demoniac  steals  out  of  them  like  a  vapor 
to  corrode  and  corrupt  the  pink  and  innocent 
convolutions  of  the  brain.  At  one  period  the 
theologians  very  nearly  let  the  world  go  to  the 
devil  because  they  got  so  busy  disputing  how 
many  angels  could  stand  on  the  point  of  a 
197 


Prefaces 


needle,  and  they  were  perfectly  well-meaning 
theologians  at  that.* 

The  case  is  stated  very  clearly  in  the  Bible. 
Certain  leaders  among  the  Jews  wanted  to  num 
ber  the  people.  God  told  them  not  to.  He 
knew  what  would  happen.  They  would  become 
so  excited  looking  at  the  large  numbers  that 
they  would  get  some  wicked  notion  about  falling 
on  neighboring  States  and  subjugating  them. 
And  when  Providence  told  them  not  to,  they 
did  it  anyhow;  and,  if  we  remember  rightly, 
the  result  was  that  they  brought  down  some 
sort  of  a  pestilence  upon  themselves. 

But  it  is  useless  to  multiply  examples.  A 
casual  glance  through  the  history  of  the  world 
is  enough  to  convince  any  open-minded  person 
that  large  numbers  looked  at  too  long  have  been 
primarily  responsible  for  the  ruin  of  all  the  in 
dividuals  and  commonwealths  that  have  ever 
been  ruined.  In  our  new  Arithmetic  more  stress 
will  be  laid  upon  the  Esthetic  and  Moral 

*  It  is  true  that  we  have  taken  another  view  of  these 
theologians  in  another  Preface  .  .  .  but  that  was  in  an 
other  Preface.  Ideas  change  color  according  to  the  com 
pany  they  keep. 

198 


Preface  to  a  Moral  Book  of  Arithmetic 

Value  of  such  numbers  as  the  student  is  encour 
aged  to  commune  with,  in  their  natural  condi 
tion,  than  upon  what  might  happen  if  those 
numbers  were  added  or  subtracted  or  multi 
plied.  A  few  simple  astronomical  calculations 
will  be  permitted  for  the  convenience  of  mari 
ners.  But  astronomy  is  a  subject  we  intend  to 
take  up  in  a  more  thorough  way  when  we  write 
our  essay  to  be  entitled  "A  Preface  to  Dr. 
Harter's  Almanac." 


Preface  to  a  Book  Withheld 


Preface  to  a  Book  Withheld 

THE  book  to  which  this  is  the  preface  will  never 
get  into  type.  It  consists,  or  would  have  con 
sisted,  of  some  eighteen  hundred  jests,  short 
poems,  anecdotes,  etc.,  which  have  been  con 
sidered  too  daring,  on  the  whole,  for  newspaper 
publication.  The  "art  form"  known  as  the  Lim 
erick  predominates. 

We  do  not  wish  it  to  be  inferred  that  there  is 
anything  actually  ribald  in  these  jests  and 
rhymes.  Swift  would  have  thought  them  slow; 
and  they  would  have  lacked  the  pep  to 


.fill 


The  spicy  times  of  great  Elizabeth 
With  sounds  that  echo  still. 


Most  of  them  contain,  we  aver,  more  wit  than 
Boccaccio's  "Decameron";  they  are  more  chaste 
than  Balzac's  "Droll  Stories";  they  are  more 
203 


Prefaces 


delicate  than  Smollett;  they  are  more  candidly 
what  they  are  than  the  equivocal  Sterne. 

We  fling  them  into  the  waste  paper  basket, 
after  having  considered  some  of  them  almost 
daily  for  two  or  three  years,  with  a  sigh;  we  do 
not  quite  dare  to  publish  them  in  a  newspaper 
which  may  finally  line  the  pantry  shelves  and 
come  to  the  attention  of  some  young  Finnish 
cook  with  an  unformed  mind;  after  all,  we  must 
try  to  be,  in  our  modest  way,  a  guardian  of 
public  taste;  in  thousands  of  homes  to-day  the 
young  of  both  s-x-s  are  getting  their  first  impres 
sions  of  life  and  literature  from  the  editorial 
pages,  Heaven  help  them !  We  must  practice 
the  circumspection  which  Caesar  recommended 
to  his  wife.  (Parenthetically,  we  must  suppose 
Caesar's  wife  to  have  been  a  woman  of  great 
generosity.  He  said,  "Caesar's  wife  must  be 
above  suspicion."  And  she  forbore  to  answer, 
"Yes,  Julius,  and  that  will  be  easier  for  me  than 
for  you.  I  have  never  traveled  in  Egypt.") 

We  fling  these  contributions  away;  but  the 
world  has  missed  something. 

Some  of  them  are  so  triumphantly  respectable 
204 


Preface  to  a  Book  Withheld 

— in  spite  of  your  wicked  mind !  Some  of  them 
are  so  discreet !  Some  of  them  skate  with  such 
composure  over  such  thin  ice  I  Some  of  them 
smile  at  you  with  such  demure  innocence  up  to 
the  point  at  which  you  begin  to  smile  at  them! 
We  give  you  our  word,  there  is  scarcely  one  of 
them  you  would  not  enjoy  and  repeat  if  our 
sternly  puritanical  cast  of  mind  did  not  deny 
them  to  you. 

There  is,  for  instance,  the  one  which  goes : 

There  was  a  young  fellow  from  Frisco 
Who  never  had  eaten  Nabisco 


the  risk,  O! 


Truly,  it  is  a  harmless  thing.  It  would  not 
shock  us  were  we  the  dean  of  a  theological  semi 
nary.  If  you  took  a  girl  to  the  play  and  it  was 
repeated  on  the  stage  she  would  not,  necessarily, 
feel  called  upon  to  rush  from  the  place  and  re 
port  it  to  her  mother.  We  have  been  on  the 
verge  of  printing  it  in  its  entirety  a  dozen  times 
these  last  two  years  .  .  .  and  yet,  now,  we  are 
205 


Prefaces 


too  cowardly  and  conservative.  We  compro 
mise  that  we  may  remain  .  .  .  uncompromised. 
How  can  we  be  quite  sure  what  construction 
might  have  been  put  upon  the  interesting  lines 
omitted  if  we  had  not  omitted  them? 

We  live  in  an  age  so  remarkably  pure,  be 
cause  it  is  so  frequently  reformed  whether  it 
likes  it  or  not,  that  our  apprehension  of  the 
iniquity  in  the  minds  of  others  has  become 
almost  abnormally  acute.  And  we  fear  that  all 
those  others  who  may  not  have  iniquity  in  their 
minds  may  have  the  same  over-sharp  perception 
of  iniquity  that  we  have.  This  makes  us  finical. 
This  makes  us  cling  tightly  to  appearances. 
This  makes  us  discard  many  a  pretty  little  trifle 
that  Rabelais  would  not  have  hesitated  over  for 
an  instant. 

There  is  an  anecdote,  which  goes : 

"An  Irishman  named  Pat,  upon  being  asked, 

'Do ?'  replied,  with  a  flash  of 

Celtic  wit,  'No,  yer  honor,  but '  " 

The  thing  is  as  essentially  happy  and  charm 
ing  as  the  limerick  which  preceded  it.  But  we 
will  say  no  more  about  it.  Enough  that  we  are 
206 


Preface  to  a  Book  Withheld 

at  one  with  our  era  and  have  the  keen,  censo 
rious  rectitude  which  condemns  all  these 
sprightly  chirrupers  to  silence. 

It  will  not  have  escaped  our  readers  that  in 
calling  attention  to  our  suppression  of  this  book 
we  have  also  called  attention  to  our  own  nice 
morality.  Many  will  incline  to  the  opinion  that 
we  might  better  have  suppressed  it  and  said 
nothing  about  the  suppression.  There  is  much 
to  be  said  for  that  opinion.  But  such  reticence 
is  out  of  fashion,  and  we  are  too  thoroughly 
in  sympathy  with  present  times  and  present 
manners  to  seem  to  criticize  them  by  affecting 
a  superiority  to  them.  We  suppress  the  book 
and  we  call  attention  to  the  suppression  in  or 
der  that  our  virtue  may  be  known  to  all  men. 
The  points  of  taste  and  ethics  involved  in  this 
policy  are  many  and  we  hope  to  treat  them  more 
adequately  when  we  write  our  "Preface  to  the 
Report  of  a  Committee  for  the  Suppression  of 
Literature." 

More  than  that;  we  are  seeking  for  a  par 
ticular  job  and  we  take  this  means  of  advertis 
ing  our  fitness  for  it.  We  wish  the  job  of  edit- 
207 


Prefaces 


ing  and  rewriting  all  the  world's  great  literary 
masterpieces  so  that  they  will  be  acceptable  to 
all  the  organizations  and  individuals  that  are 
now  a  bit  suspicious  of  them  because  they  are 
masterpieces.  And  unless  we  announce  our  suit 
ability  for  the  task,  how  shall  it  ever  become 
known  ? 

Just  another  quotation  from  the  slain  book 
before  we  reluctantly  drop  the  last  leaf  of  it 
into  the  waste  basket: 

There  was  a  young  fellow  named  .  .  . 


Innocuous,  we  swear!  Innocent  as  the  snow- 
white  hair  that  trembles  underneath  the  halo  of 
a  saint! 

And  yet,  could  we  trust  you  with  it? 

For  its  innocence  is  of  that  sort  of  awakened 

innocence  which  is  not  by  any  means  ignorant; 

its  innocence  moves  daintily  and  delicately  on 

the  blushing  feet  of  knowledge  past  a  little  area 

208 


Preface  to  a  Book  Withheld 

of  less  harmless  sophistication,  shrinking  and 
mincing  as  the  danger  is  avoided.  One  joggle 
from  a  thought  less  generously  obtuse  and  the 
poem's  pink  toes  might  be  stained. 

We  consign  it  to  oblivion  rather  than  that  it 
should  be  misunderstood! 


Preface  to  Hoyt  *s  Rules 


Preface  to  Hoyt's  Rules 

IN  introducing  this  compilation  of  rules  I  must 
confess  to  a  certain  disappointment  that  the 
guiding  principles  of  the  game  of  Shark  Loo 
have  been  omitted. 

If  there  is  no  such  game,  then  I  am  forced" 
to  the  conclusion  that  an  aged  nautical  gentle 
man  whom  I  met  some  years  ago  in  the  vicinity 
of  a  seamen's  home  on  Staten  Island  is  a  per 
son  to  be  distrusted.  He  was  the  only  person 
1  ever  encountered  who  smoked  a  pipe  and 
chewed  tobacco  at  the  same  time,  and  the  veins 
on  the  backs  of  his  hands  were  very  blue  and 
very  knotty,  and  in  his  mild  and  faded  eye 
there  was  a  milky  innocence. 

His  father  before  him  had  been  a  seafaring 
man  (he  said),  and  in  the  thirties  of  the  last 
century  had  been  cast  away  upon  the  coast  of 
213 


Prefaces 


Borneo,  among  the  Dyaks.  These  Dyaks  were 
not  persons  whom  his  father  (who  was  a  fastid 
ious  man)  would  voluntarily  have  chosen  as  his 
associates.  His  father  (who  was  an  alert  man) 
observed  that  they  were  great  gamblers.  His 
father  (who  was  a  natural  born  leader)  speed 
ily  acquired  great  influence  among  the  Dyaks, 
and  (because  his  father  was  a  pious  man)  en 
deavored  to  make  them  stop  gambling. 

His  father  succeeded  (for  his  father  was  a 
persuasive  man)  in  making  his  Dyaks  promise 
to  give  up  every  gambling  game  except  one. 
This  game  his  father  (who  had  an  inventive 
turn  of  mind)  named  Shark  Loo.  It  was  a 
variation  (so  his  father,  a  man  always  inter 
ested  in  games  of  chance  in  a  purely  scientific 
way,  told  him)  of  Fly  Loo.  In  playing  Fly 
Loo  each  gambler  contributes  a  coin  to  a  pool; 
each  gambler  is  provided  with  a  lump  of  sugar; 
these  lumps  of  sugar  are  arranged  in  a  row;  the 
gamblei  upon  whose  lump  of  sugar  a  fly  first 
perches  takes  the  pool.  The  Dyak  version  (my 
informant's  father  was  shocked  to  note)  con 
sisted  in  trussing  up  Chinese  pirates  (who  in- 


Preface  to  Hoyt's  Rules 


fested  those  coasts  and  were  frequently  cap 
tured  by  the  Dyaks)  to  the  ends  of  long  bam 
boo  poles,  and  letting  them  into  the  sea  off  the 
ends  of  wharves  and  boat  landings.  The  Dyak 
whose  Chinese  pirate  first  attracted  a  shark  won 
the  pool.  This  sport,  which  his  otherwise  do 
cile  Dyaks  would  on  no  account  give  up,  so 
wrought  upon  my  informant's  father  (who  was 
a  humane  man)  that  he  eventually  left  Borneo, 
or  he  might  otherwise  have  founded  a  dynasty 
there,  and  my  informant  might  have  been  King 
of  Borneo  at  the  present  day. 

If  you  wish  further  information  from  the 
Rightful  Heir  to  the  Throne  of  Borneo  (as 
his  father,  who  died  a  melancholy  and  disap 
pointed  man,  always  called  him)  look  for  an 
old  gentleman  in  whose  eye  of  faded  blue  there 
dwells  a  milky  innocence. 

He  had  once  been  cast  away,  he  told  me,  on 
an  island  off  the  coast  of  South  America;  and 
for  years  he  had  nothing  to  eat  but  cockatoos 
and  monkeys.  This  diet  had  had  a  surprising 
effect  upon  him  .  .  .  but  this  part  of  the  Pref 
ace  seems  to  fall  naturally  into  rhyme : 
215 


Prefaces 


As  I  was  passing  the  Seamen's  Rest 

There  skipped  across  the  street 
A  sailor  who  screamed  like  a  cockatoo 

And  used  his  hands  for  feet. 

"Now,  wherefore,  mariner,"  quoth  I, 

"Confuse  the  foot  and  hand? 
And  why  you  crew  like  a  cockatoo 

I  cannot  understand." 

Then  he  swung  himself  from  a  fire-escape, 
And  he  hung  there  easy  and  free 

Like  a  tropical  monk  from  a  pine  tree  trunk, 
And  he  spun  this  yarn  to  me: 

"On  the  Reuben  Ranzo  I  set  sail, 
And  I  was  the  larboard  mate, 

And  a  nautical  guy  you  will  never  spy 
More  orderly  nor  sedate; 

"I  never  used  my  feet  for  hands, 

Nor  yet  my  hands  for  feet, 
I  never  screamed  like  a  cockatoo 

For  biscuits  for  to  eat. 

"But  I  eats  as  other  humans  does, 
And  my  tastes  is  nowise  quaint, 

And  I  never  springs  no  caudal  swings 
With  a  tail  which  really  ain't; 

216 


Preface  to  Hoyt's  Rules 


"But  I  drinks  my  grog  and  I  stands  my  watch, 

And  I  eats  my  normal  duff, 
And  I  was  engaged  for  to  marry  a  gal 

Which  her  name  was  Nancy  Huff; 

"But  the  Reuben  Ranzo  hooked  herself 
As  she  rambled  around  the  Horn, 

And  she  foundered  and  sank  on  a  lonely  bank — 
A  mournful  coast  forlorn ! 

"And  I  am  alone  in  a  jungle  wild, 

And  all  I  gets  to  eat 
Is  cockatoos,  and  monks  what  use 

Their  little  hands  for  feet; 

"I  mourns  and  mourns  and  I  eats  and  eats 

Upon  that  sorrowful  strand. 
Till  a  gradual  doubt  arises  in  me 

As  to  whether  a  foot  is  a  hand; 

"I  eats  and  I  eats,  and  I  mourns  and  mourns — 
And  my  beard  like  feathers  grew, 

And  my  nose  to  a  peak  like  a  parrot's  beak, 
And  I  screamed  like  a  cockatoo; 

"And  I  eats  and  eats,  and  I  mourns  and  mourns 

Till  a  ship  sails  over  the  blue — 
Which  they  lassos  me  from  a  cocoanut  tree 

And  sells  me  into  a  Zoo; 

217 


Prefaces 


"Alas  for  love!     My  Nancy  seen 

Me  frolicking  in  my  cage 
And  all  of  her  love  turns  into  scorn, 

And  she  says  to  me  in  rage: 

"  'I  never  will  marry  a  man  who  screams 

With  a  voice  like  a  cockatoo! 
Nor  a  man  who  swings  from  bars  and  rings — 

You  are  changed,  you  are  changed — adieu!'  " 

And  I  left  him  alone  with  his  grief,  and  passed 

Sadly  along  the  street; 
But  I  flung  him  some  peanuts  to  pay  for  his  tale — 

And  he  picked  them  up  with  his  feet. 

If  you  should  meet  with  the  Rightful  Heir 
to  the  Throne  of  Borneo,  listen  to  him  with  a 
seemly  reverence,  for  (like  his  father  before 
him)  he  is  a  sensitive  man. 


Preface  to  the  Diary  of  a 
Failure 


Preface  to  the  Diary  of  a  Failure 

THE  gentleman  who  wrote  this  Diary  and 
asked  us  to  furnish  an  introduction  for  it,  ad 
vises  us  that  there  are  a  great  many  lies  in  it. 

They  were  necessary,  he  explains,  in  order 
that  the  protagonist  of  the  drama  might  con 
tinue  to  command  the  sympathy  of  the  author. 

And  he  has  adopted  the  proper  method  of 
approach,  in  our  opinion.  We  have  known  him 
for  years;  he  has  just  put  his  autobiography 
into  our  hands;  the  book  exhales  himself;  it 
smacks  and  smells  of  his  personal  flavor  and 
aroma ;  the  book  and  the  man  are  of  a  piece. 

And  he  has  attained  this  unity  of  himself 
with  his  utterance  through  a  conscientious  falsi 
fication  of  the  mere  brute  facts  of  his  external 
life. 

In  order  to  write  a  thousand  pages  a  man 
221 


Prefaces 


must  keep  enthusiastic  concerning  the  subject 
of  his  narrative;  and  if  the  subject  is  himself 
he  will  scarcely  be  able  to  draw  the  material 
for  this  continuing  enthusiasm  from  what  he 
has  actually  done  so  largely  as  from  what  he 
should  have  done  and  what  he  intended  to  do. 

Perhaps  a  quotation  from  the  Diary  itself 
will  assist  in  illustrating  our  friend's  literary 
method.  The  following  sentences  are  from 
Chapter  24: 

"I  never  argued  with  my  wife's  mother  nor 
answered  any  of  her  fantastic  accusations;  and 
on  this  occasion  I  told  her  courteously,  but 
with  finality,  that  while  it  was  not  true  that 
I  had  set  fire  to  the  sheets  and  to  her  daughter's 
night  clothing  by  smoking  in  bed,  yet  it  would 
be  none  of  her  affair  had  I  really  done  so,  and 
I  insisted  upon  my  right  to  smoke  at  any  hour 
and  in  any  place  that  pleased  me.  I  added 
that  in  case  she  was  not  prepared  to  acquiesce 
in  this  I  would  be  compelled  to  leave  her  house 
at  once,  taking  my  wife  and  the  five  children 
with  me;  and  I  told  her  plainly  that  if  I  were 
forced  to  this  radical  step  she  need  not  expect 
222 


Preface  to  the  Diary  of  a  Failure 

to  be  a  welcome  visitor  in  whatever  home  it 
might  be  my  fortune  to  establish.  My  wife's 
mother  broke  down  and  wept  at  this,  with 
drew  her  unjust  charges  and  begged  me  to  stay 
and  use  her  humble  house  as  my  own  until 
such  time  as  I  should  be  solicited  to  accept  some 
employment  compatible  with  my  talents  and 
dignity.  I  finally  consented  to  forgive  her  and 
remain,  but  I  warned  her,  too,  that  she  must 
see  to  it  in  the  future  that  the  boarders  treated 
me  with  more  consideration  .  .  ." 

Grossly  speaking,  our  friend  lied. 

The  facts  were  that  he  confessed  to  having 
smoked  his  pipe  in  bed,  setting  fire  to  the  covers 
and  burning  his  wife,  who  ran  through  the  cor 
ridors  of  the  boarding  house,  between  a  double 
row  of  alarmed  guests,  screaming,  and  with 
a  screaming  baby  in  her  arms,  to  her  mother's 
room.  The  mother  ordered  the  author  of  the 
Diary  from  the  house  at  once;  himself,  his  wife 
and  his  two  older  children  pleaded  with  the 
old  lady  until  daybreak  before  she  would  relent 
and  allow  him  to  remain. 

Grossly  speaking,  we  say,  our  friend  lied. 


Prefaces 


But  the  world  should  learn  to  speak  and  judge 
more  gently  and  more  truthfully. 

The  facts,  our  friend  felt,  did  not  represent 
him.  His  body  dwelt  in  that  house,  among 
brawling  relatives-in-law,  uninteresting  children 
of  whom  he  happened  to  be  the  father,  and 
jeering  boarders — but  that  was  not  the  truth 
about  the  man  as  he  knew  himself;  his  soul, 
his  essential  ego,  lived  otherwhere,  beyond  the 
accidents  of  fate  and  untouched  by  the  insults 
of  chance  and  circumstance.  Should  he  not  be 
true  to  his  soul,  which  was  of  a  quality  that  re 
jected  such  scenes  as  false  to  itself,  automatic 
ally  expunging  all  that  was  alien  to  it? 

Had  he  related  the  mere  physical  facts  he 
would  have  lied  about  his  spirit,  that  eternal 
thing;  but  with  a  superior  honesty  he  chose  to 
deny  the  irrelevant,  the  material,  the  temporal. 

There  are  two  sorts  of  truth  about  all  of  us. 
There  is  that  which  the  world  sees,  and  that 
which  we  know.  Our  deeds,  which  are  known 
to  all  men,  too  often  appear  to  us  to  be  strange, 
inexplicable  libels  on  ourselves. 

They  are  the  falsehoods  told  about  us  by  life. 


Preface  to  the  Diary  of  a  Failure 

And  should  we  begin  to  accept  them  as  the 
truth,  we  are  dead  spiritually.  For  if  we  do 
not  feel  to-day  stronger  and  more  courageous 
and  more  moral  than  we  were  yesterday — than 
the  accidents  of  yesterday  mendaciously  made 
us  out  to  be — how  shall  we  be  able  to  face  to 
morrow? 

The  great  lesson  is  to  forgive  yourself. 

These  diaries  that  we  are  always  writing — 
let  us  steadfastly  believe  that  the  point  of  view 
in  them  is  the  same  as  that  adopted  by  the  Re 
cording  Angel. 

Look  at  each  day  and  say,  this  is  another 
day !  My  sin  and  sloth  and  foolishness  of  yes 
terday  I  utterly  repudiate.  It  was  not  I.  My 
soul  did  not  do  that  nor  consent  to  it.  I  was 
caught  in  a  corner  by  circumstance,  and  clubbed 
into  doing  this  or  that — but  the  deed  does  not 
represent  me;  I  am  something  better  to-day, 
I  will  be  something  better  to-morrow. 

This  is  another  day! — shall  we  cloud  the 
new  dawn  o'er  with  a  mist  of  sighs  and  useless 
regrets?     Let  us  forgive  our  own  trespasses, 
as  we  forgive  them  that  trespass  against  us. 
225 


Foreword  to  a  Literary 
Censors  Autobiography 


Foreword  to  a  Literary  Censor's 
Autobiography 

THE  gentleman  who  has  written  the  tale  of 
his  life  at  length  in  this  volume  is  employed  by 
a  Vice  Commission  to  ferret  out  obscenities  in 
works  of  art.  In  our  estimation  he  is  doing  a 
most  important  work. 

Censors  are  necessary,  increasingly  neces 
sary,  if  America  is  to  avoid  having  a  vital  lit 
erature.  There  is  a  knocking  at  the  gate.  The 
artist  is  knocking  at  the  gate.  If  he  gets  in  he 
will  report  to  us  what  we  already  know — that 
Duncan  has  been  murdered.  And  if  the  artist 
reports  life  to  us  as  it  is,  and  as  we  all  know 
it  to  be  ...  well,  that  would  be  too  frightful 
to  contemplate! 

If  we  are  to  continue  entirely  comfortable 
229 


Prefaces 


we  must  escape  the  truth  by  crucifying  all  those 
who  come  bearing  witness  to  it. 

The  gentleman  whose  book  we  introduce  has 
a  charming  mind.  Thoroughly  to  appreciate 
it,  one  must  read  the  entire  volume  which  he 
has  produced.  But  he  has  a  kind  of  prologue 
and  epitome  of  his  own,  which  gives  a  glimpse 
of  it;  our  note  and  his  prologue  (which  fol 
lows)  are  sufficient  introduction: 

I  showed  an  inclination  towards  my  Life 
Work  at  a  very  early  age. 

I  could  not  have  been  more  than  ten  years 
old  when  I  reported  to  my  Teacher  at  School 
that  Myrtle  Snodgrass,  a  little  girl  who  sat 
in  the  next  seat  to  me,  had  written  a  naughty 
word  upon  her  slate. 

"How  do  you  know  it  is  a  naughty  word?" 
asked  Teacher. 

"Because,"  I  answered,  "Myrtle  Snodgrass 
jerked  her  slate  away  and  would  not  let  me  read 


it." 


"Then  you  did  not  see  it?" 
"No,  ma'am."    I  have  always  been  truthful. 
230 


Foreword  to  a  Censor's  Autobiography 

"Perhaps,"  said  Teacher,  "it  was  not  a  word 
at  all.  You  have  accused  Myrtle  of  something 
that  you  cannot  prove.  It  is  you  who  have 
been  naughty,  Harold!  You  have  no  right  to 
look  at  Myrtle's  slate  if  she  does  not  wish  you 
to.  And  you  have  reported  something  you  do 
not  know  to  be  true." 

I  have  always  been  persecuted  in  my  efforts 
to  safeguard  the  public  morals. 

"Teacher,"  I  said,  "if  it  wasn't  a  naughty 
word,  then  it  must  have  been  a  naughty  pic 
ture." 

"Why  do  you  say  that,  Harold?" 

"Teacher,  she  had  been  showing  her  slate 
to  Willie  Simms  and  they  had  been  laughing 
over  it.  And  when  I  tried  to  see  too  she  jerked 
it  away." 

I  still  think  my  logic  was  unassailable,  child 
though  I  was.  I  still  believe  that  my  deduc 
tions  were  quite  justified  by  the  circumstances. 
For  in  the  years  since  then  I  have  had  it  borne 
in  upon  me,  on  many,  many  occasions,  that 
words,  phrases,  allusions,  which  I  cannot  read 
ily  understand  or  which  are  deliberately  hidden 


Prefaces 


from  me,  are  usually  capable  of  some  construc 
tion  not  altogether  proper.  It  is  always  safe 
to  infer,  when  people  refuse  to  explain  to  one, 
that  their  real  and  secret  meanings  will  not  bear 
explanation. 

I  told  my  father,  who  was  a  member  of  the 
school  board,  that  the  teacher  had  scolded  me 
for  reporting  something  so  naughty  about  a 
little  girl  that  I  did  not  like  to  go  into  details, 
and  he  took  the  matter  up  officially. 

Perhaps  even  then  the  Teacher  would  not 
have  lost  her  position,  but  I  was  able  to  supply 
supplementary  evidence  which  (my  instinct  told 
me  even  at  that  early  age)  tended  to  prove 
that  this  teacher  was  no  fit  person  to  form  the 
minds  of  ingenuous  little  children.  Arriving 
at  the  schoolhouse  earlier  than  any  of  the  other 
pupils  one  morning,  and  earlier  than  the 
Teacher  herself,  I  found  her  desk  unlocked.  It 
was  usually  locked — a  suspicious  thing  in  itself. 
I  felt.  Naturally,  finding  it  unlocked  I  ran 
sacked  it,  in  the  interests  of  the  public  wel 
fare  .  .  .  and,  I  may  add,  my  father  had  sug 
gested  something  of  the  sort. 


Foreword  to  a  Censor's  Autobiography 

I  found  two  damning  photographs.  Abom 
inable  pictures!  One  was  the  picture  of 
Teacher  herself,  surrounded  by  several  other 
young  women,  all  in  the  abbreviated  costume  of 
the  basket-ball  team  of  a  girls'  college.  This 
might  not  have  been  so  bad  in  itself  .  .  .  though 
it  is  a  sort  of  thing  I  do  not  approve  .  .  .  but 
near  by  was  the  photograph  of  a  young  man 
partially  nude.  He  had  on  the  costume  of  a 
college  sprinter  .  .  .  nothing  else! 

The  Teacher  later  told  the  school  board  that 
it  was  a  picture  of  her  brother.  But,  as  my 
father  pointed  out,  it  might  just  as  readily  have 
been  the  photograph  of  some  one  to  whom 
she  was  not  related.  And  the  relationship  itself, 
my  father  justly  said,  counted  for  little  against 
the  impropriety  of  leaving  such  things  where 
they  were  likely  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  inno 
cent  children  such  as  his  little  son. 

Even  then  the  majority  of  the  school  board 
were  unwilling  to  dismiss  Teacher  on  an  out 
and  out  charge  of  improper  conduct;  but  my 
father  and  some  of  his  right  thinking  friends 
were  strong  enough  in  the  community  to  get  rid 


Prefaces 


of  her  on  another  charge.  It  was  generally 
understood,  however,  that  her  services  were 
really  dispensed  with  because  of  some  unnamed 
immorality  .  .  .  my  father  and  his  friends 
were  too  just  and  too  merciful  to  relate  the 
details  publicly.  I  am  proud  and  happy  to 
testify  that,  because  of  the  cloud  under 
which  she  left  our  godly  little  city,  this  per- 
verter  of  the  morals  of  childhood  was  never 
afterward  able  to  obtain  a  position  as  a  teacher. 
There  was  nothing  definite  ever  published 
against  her  .  .  .  but  people  generally  seemed 
to  feel,  even  as  I,  child  that  I  was,  had  felt, 
that  there  must  be  something  wrong  some 
where  .  .  .  something  wrong. 

Something  wrong! 

How  often  I  have  felt  that!  How  unerr 
ingly  my  soul  has  reacted  to  the  aroma  of  evil ! 
I  say  it  (not  with  worldly  pride,  for  that  is 
sinful,  but  with  the  satisfaction  of  the  used  and 
useful  weapon  in  the  holy  war  against  iniquity) 
— I  say  with  satisfaction  that  I  have  a  sixth 
sense  which  directs  me  infallibly  to  the  detec 
tion  of  obscenity. 


Foreword  to  a  Censor's  Autobiography 

Authors  may  talk  of  art,  and  chatter  of  its 
relation  to  life — they  may  prattle  of  truth  and 
duty — but  they  cannot  hide  from  me  the  carnal 
thought  and  the  lascivious  intention  behind  their 
specious  innocence! 

A  thing  is  either  pure  or  it  is  impure.  My 
sixth  sense  informs  me  at  once.  No  argument 
is  necessary.  My  spirit  is  either  shocked  or  it 
is  not  shocked. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  understand  art  in  order 
to  condemn  it. 

I  love  to  sit  in  my  library  with  the  hundreds 
of  books  and  pictures  I  have  condemned  about 
me  and  think  that  I  have  been  of  some  use  to 
my  generation.  In  my  mind's  eye,  as  I  run  my 
physical  eye  over  the  book  bindings,  I  can  see 
the  improper  passages  quivering  and  glowing 
inside  the  volumes. 

I  know  them  all  by  heart! 

And  I  thrill  again.to  each  one  of  them,  with 
the  same  thrill  I  felt  when  I  first  discovered 
it  and  realized  that  I  was  about  to  render  an 
other  service  to  society.  I  tremble,  and  at 
235 


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times  my  eyes  fill  with  tears,  as  I  repeat  them 
aloud. 

And  when  I  am  gone  my  son  will  take 
up  the  work,  I  am  proud  to  say.  Only  last 
night,  as  I  crept  down  the  basement  stairs  to 
the  kitchen  to  listen  at  the  door  and  make  sure 
the  housemaid  was  conducting  herself  properly 
with  her  young  man,  I  stumbled  over  my  son. 
He  was  already  at  the  keyhole.  I  patted  his 
head  in  the  darkness  and  thanked  heaven  that 
I  had  been  rewarded  in  such  a  child.  I  patted 
his  head  and  kissed  him  on  his  white,  young 
brow,  his  pure  young  brow,  and  we  knelt  to 
gether  there. 


Note  to  a  Chapter  on 
Journalism 


Note  to  a  Chapter  on  Journalism 

JULIAN  STREET,  in  his  book,  "American  Ad 
ventures,"  devotes  a  chapter  to  Georgia  journal 
ism.  There  was  one  character  connected  with 
Georgia  journalism  fifteen  years  ago  whom  Mr. 
Street  does  not  mention ;  but  we  remember  him 
better  than  many  a  more  Caucasian  person. 

His  name  was  Tusky  Barnard,  he  was  of  a 
light  chocolate  color  and  was  the  Managing 
Janitor  of  the  Atlanta  News  when  we  went  to 
work  there. 

Tusky  named  himself  Managing  Janitor. 
The  Managing  Editor  of  the  paper  had  a 
strength — we  will  not  say  a  weakness,  for  the 
habit  had  such  a  grip  on  him — for  pasting  little 
bulletins  about  this,  that  and  the  other  thing 
239 


Prefaces 


all  over  the  office.  Tusky  admired  these  bul 
letins  immensely,  and  presently  began  to  put  up 
bulletins  of  his  own,  which  ran  about  like  this : 

PLEAS  REMEMBER  CLENESS  is  NEXT  TO  GOD 
LINESS  DOAN  THROW  CIGAR  ENDS  ON  FLOOR  BY 
ORDER  TUSKY  BARNARD  MANAGING  JANITOR. 

PLEAS  REMEMBER  LADYS  is  FLOURS  OF  THE 

EARTH  OFFIS  BOYS  DOAN  SPIT  ON  FLOOR  THEY 
GETS  THEIR  DRES  IN  IT  BY  ODOR  TUSKY  BAR 
NARD  MANAGING  JANITOR. 

We  made  a  collection  of  some  twenty  or 
more  of  Tusky's  bulletins;  but  we  have  lost 
them  and  remember  only  four  or  five. 

We  naturally  supposed  that  Tusky's  name 
was  Tuskegee,  and  one  day  we  asked  him.  But 
no. 

"Mah  gran'ma  done  name  me,"  Tusky  ex 
plained.  uMah  full  name  is  Tuskyrory  Bore- 
alis  Bah'na'd,  afteh  a  river  whah  mah  gran'ma 
been  bo'n." 

We  gathered  that  there  must  have  been  some 
confusion  in  his  mind  of  the  Tuscarawas  River 
with  the  Aurora  Borealis,  but  it  was  a  good 
240 


Note  to  a  Chapter  on  Journalism 

name,  and  Tusky  liked  it  all  the  better,  he 
said,  because  it  had  a  religious  sound. 

"I'se  a  chu'ch  niggah,"  he  said.  And  he 
used  to  tell  us  how  he  had  "come  through." 

Tusky's  conversion  was  very  similar  in  man 
ner  to  that  of  St.  Paul.  Tusky  had  been  strug 
gling — not  to  be  converted,  but  to  avoid  con 
version — for  weeks.  But  the  Spirit  was  hot 
on  his  trail — it  dogged  him,  he  said.  (Just  as 
the  protagonist  of  Francis  Thompson's  poem, 
"The  Hound  of  Heaven,"  is  pursued.)  Tusky 
was  a  "Free  Thinkler";  and  he  was  proud  of 
being  a  "Free  Thinkler";  because  it  made  him 
different  from  the  other  negroes,  but  at  the 
same  time  he  was  more  than  a  little  frightened 
by  the  Satanic  eminence  to  which  it  raised  him. 

One  day,  while  a  negro  revival  meeting  was 
in  full  swing  in  his  neighborhood,  Tusky  took 
to  his  bed,  sick,  a  prey  to  conflicting  emotions. 

"Mah  bruddah  an'  mah  sisteh'n  law  think 
hit's  a  sickness  o'  de  flesh,"  Tusky  told  us,  "but 
in  mah  hea't  Ah  knows  it  am  a  sickness  of  de 
sperrit." 

He  covered  himself  with  blankets,  he  said, 


Prefaces 


for  he  had  chills.  One  after  another  all  the 
negroes  prominently  connected  with  the  revival 
meeting  visited  him,  and  .prayed  and  exhorted 
beside  his  bed. 

"But  Ah  laid  dah  an'  I  shivah  an'  I  shivah," 
said  Tusky,  "an'  Ah  helt  off  de  pruspahation. 
Ah  had  er  thought  ef  de*  pruspahation  come  de 
glory  o'  de  Lawd  would  come  erlong  wiv  it. 
An'  Ah  didn't  want  to  lose  de  glory  o'  bein'  a 
Free  Thinkler.  An'  foh  free  days  Ah  laid  on 
dat  bed  an'  wrassle  agin  de  Lawd,  de  prayin' 
gwine  on  ovah  me  all  de  time.  An'  yet,  all  de 
while,  in  mah  hea't  Ah  was  wishin'  de  pruspa 
hation  would  start  an'  de  Lawd  would  come." 

And,  at  the  end  of  three  days,  so  Tusky  told 
us,  the  perspiration  came.  It  was  in  the  night 
that  the  perspiration  came;  there  was  a  little 
sprinkle  of  snow  on  the  ground — we  are  not 
sure  but  that  Tusky  staged  the  drama  on  Christ 
mas  Eve;  he  was  quite  capable  of  it — and  with 
the  perspiration  came  a  voice. 

"Hit  am  a  Voice  dat  fill  de  whole  Hebben 
and  Ea'th,"  Tusky  said,  "an'  hit  holler  out 
free  times:  'Tuskyrory  Bohealis,  yo*  Free 


Note  to  a  Chapter  on  Journalism 

Thinkler  yo'f  Why  puss  acute  me,  nig  g  ah! 
Tuskyrory  Bohealis,  Free  Thinkler,  quit  yo' 
pussacutin'  me,  nig  yah!'  " 

Tusky  rose,  all  covered  with  "pruspahation" 
as  he  was,  and  staggered  out  into  the  yard. 
And  there  he  saw  what  St.  Paul  saw — a  light; 
a  great  light  in  the  sky.  And  he  heard  again 
the  Voice  that  cried:  "Tuskyrory  Bohealis, 
yo'  Free  Thinkler  yo' ,  quit  yo'  pussacutin'  me, 
nig  g  ah!" 

He  fell  down,  he  used  to  tell  us — and  he 
told  us  the  story  regularly  every  Friday  after 
noon,  which  was  pay  day,  and  we  always  gave 
him  a  dime  to  go  towards  the  purchase  of  a 
new  Bible,  as  he  said  he  had  read  his  old  one 
so  hard  it  was  about  worn  out — he  fell  down 
on  the  ground,  in  the  snow,  and  lost  conscious 
ness. 

"When  mahse'f  came  to  mahse'f  agin,"  he 
said,  "dah  Ah  was,  er  layin'  en  de  fros',  an' 
wiv  nothin'  ovah  me  but  er  bah'b-wiah  fence. 
An'  all  de  postes  er  dat  fence  had  a  ball  er 
light  onter  de  tops,  an'  de  fiah  was  er  runnin' 
back  and  fo'th  erlong  de  wiahs  er  dat  fence, 
243 


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f'om  pos'  ter  pos',  an'  de  big  Voice  was  er 
shoutin'  fom  de  balls  of  fiah  once  mo':  'Tus- 
kyrory  Bohealis,  yo'  no  'count  Free  Thinklin' 
niggah  yo'f  why  does  yo'  pussacute  mef 

"Ah  jes'  fotch  er  groan,"  Tusky  would  say, 
"an'  all  de  Free  Thinklin'  hit  pass  out  er  me. 
An'  Ah  say,  'Lawd,  Lawd,  ef  yo'  fo'give  me 
I'se  gwine  fo'  ter  fo'give  you,  and  dey  ain't 
no  reason  why  we  cain't  get  erlong  togeddah 
in  peace  an'  posterity  f'om  now  on.  Ef  yo' 
take  away  yo'  fiah  Ah's  gwine  ter  stop  mah 
pussacutin' !" 

The  fire  vanished,  as  a  sign  that  the  bargain 
was  acceptable,  and  Tusky  went  back  into  the 
house  filled  with  a  great  peace,  which,  he  said, 
had,  "aboden"  with  him  ever  since. 


Foreword  to  a  Miser 's 
dutobtography 


Foreword  to  a  Miser  s  Autobiography 

I  AM  dying,  and  after  I  am  dead  the  news 
papers  will  print  little  articles  calling  me  a  miser. 
But  no  one  will  find  any  gold  about  here.  I 
have  taken  care  of  that. 

I  have  a  scrap  book  filled  with  pieces  which 
tell  of  the  deaths  of  other  men  called  misers. 
I  know  just  what  they  will  say  of  me,  the  news 
papers  !  Some  of  them  will  have  editorials 
calling  attention  to  my  "wasted  life,"  and  say 
ing  that  even  I  got  no  enjoyment  from  it. 

The  fools  that  write  such  things! — what  do 
they  know? 

What  can  any  one  who  is  not  of  that  guild  of 
rare  souls,  so  coarsely  miscalled  by  the  world, 
ever  know  of  the  passionate  secret  romance  of 
an  existence  such  as  mine  has  been? 

There  is  gold  all  about  me  here — one  thou 
sand  and  twenty-seven  ten-dollar  pieces,  an  even 
247 


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two  thousand  and  ten  of  the  double  eagles, 
seven  hundred  and  thirty-four  five  dollar  pieces 
and  five  thousand  of  the  ones,  lacking  just 
three.  (Add  it  up — I  know  how  much  it  comes 
to.)  Each  piece  has  its  story,  its  little  drama 
of  human  life,  and  maybe  of  death.  And  some 
of  those  stories  I  know,  too.  There  are  pieces 
that  are  like  books  with  half  the  chapters  gone 
to  me;  I  know  a  little  of  the  tale  and  I  can 
finish  it  as  I  choose.  No  two  gold  pieces  are 
alike  any  more  than  if  they  were  people. 

I  never  cared  for  paper  money  or  for  silver, 
except  to  get  it  changed  into  gold.  And  I  never 
cared  much  for  jewels  either.  Land  and  gold 
are  the  two  great  realities.  But  I  never  wanted 
land.  Land  is  stupid  and  slow,  but  gold  is  like 
blood  and  thought. 

I've  had  my  coffin  built,  and  it  isn't  like  any 
one  else's  coffin.  It  is  large;  enormously  large, 
and  enormously  heavy.  Your  spendthrift  fools 
would  call  it  an  extravagance,  but  I  have  al 
ways  known  when  I  got  my  money's  worth. 

Heavy,  it  is,  and  built  of  steel.    But  the  sides 
arc  not  solid.     There  is  a  space  four  inches 
248 


Foreword  to  a  Miser's  Autobiography 

broad  all  around  between  the  outer  and  inner 
skins  of  steel.  After  I  fit  the  cunning  panels 
shut  it  looks  like  solid  steel.  And  when  the 
gold  goes  between  the  outer  and  inner  skins  it 
will  be  heavy  enough  to  fool  them,  too. 

For  there  is  where  the  gold  will  be,  and  I 
will  be  in  the  midst  of  it,  till  I  rise  again.  For 
I  believe  in  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  just 
as  they  say  in  church.  And  body  means  body. 

Some  nights  I  put  it  all  in  there,  big  double 
handfuls  at  a  time,  and  lie  down  in  the  coffin 
and  pretend  I  am  dead  already.  And  I  feel 
it  pulsing  and  quivering  behind  the  steel  skin. 
The  gold  and  I  understand  each  other;  we  al 
ways  have. 

And  sometimes  I  talk  to  it  and  it  talks  to  me. 

"I  am  the  fine  clothes  you  never  wore,"  it 
says.  "And  the  oysters  and  venison  you  never 
ate.  And  the  wine  and  fancy  drinks  you  never 
treated  yourself  to.  And  the  women  you  never 
bought.  Don't  you  wish  you  had  spent  me  for 
those  things?  Eh?" 

And  I  laugh  and  rock  and  roll  in  the  coffin, 
249 


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and  that  sets  the  gold  to  clinking  as  if  it  were 
laughing,  too. 

We  understand  each  other. 

It  warms  me  and  thrills  me;  it  beats  like 
blood  through  the  coffin  and  through  me,  and 
it  will  go  on  beating  like  blood  all  the  years  I 
lie  dead  in  the  midst  of  it  until  I  rise  again  and 
get  my  golden  harp  and  golden  crown.  For  I 
never  did  anything  bad,  and  they  are  coming 
to  me. 

It  is  all  the  fine  clothes  and  the  fancy  drinks 
and  the  women,  the  gold  is.  It  is  the  essence 
of  them.  It  is  the  blood  of  the  world.  Fools 
spend  gold  for  such  things,  and  have  them  only 
for  a  moment.  I  denied  myself,  and  I  have  the 
essence  of  them  forever.  I  used  to  think,  some 
times,  that  I  would  startle  the  town  some  night 
with  a  big  splurge,  just  to  laugh  at  the  idiots 
who  thought  and  said  I  didn't  know  how  to 
enjoy  life.  A  thousand  times  I  planned  what 
I  would  do.  And  every  time  I  planned  it  I  got 
as  much  out  of  it  as  if  I'd  really  done  it.  And 
gradually  I  came  to  see  that  that  was  where 
the  real  enjoyment  lay — in  the  power  to  cut 
250 


Foreword  to  a  Miser's  Autobiagraphy 

loose  if  I  wanted  to.  And  then  I  understood 
that  the  essence  and  the  spirit  of  it  all  are  in 
the  gold. 

But  most  people  are  too  crude  to  get  their 
pleasure  out  of  savoring  the  essence  and  aroma 
of  a  thing.  But  I  have,  and  that  way  I've 
saved  my  body  from  contamination,  and  I've 
saved  my  soul  from  sin,  and  I've  had  all  the 
essence  of  it,  too,  and  I've  got  the  gold  by  me 
yet,  into  the  bargain. 

And  it  will  be  with  me  till  the  last  trump 
blows  over  land  and  sea  and  the  dead  arise. 
Arise  in  the  body,  mind  you.  And  body  means 
body.  And  golden  crowns  are  golden  crowns. 
If  anything  else  had  been  meant  it  would  have 
been  easy  enough  to  say  so. 

I've  lived  life  to  the  full.  I've  been  right 
in  the  blood  of  life,  handled  it  and  measured 
it  and  washed  and  rolled  in  it.  And  it  makes 
me  chuckle  to  think  of  the  writers  who  pity 
misers!  Don't  pity  me!  Happy  I've  lived 
and  happy  I  will  die,  and  happy  I  will  rise 
again  from  the  dead  with  all  my  gold  about  me 
and  go  up  to  get  my  promised  crown. 
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Preface  to  a  Check  Book 

FOR  years  we  cultivated  a  pleasing  confusion 
concerning  how  much  money  we  had.  Con 
sulting  the  stubs  in  our  check  book  did  us  no 
good.  We  never  kept  it  properly  balanced. 

Pleasing  confusion,  we  say.  The  hazy  un 
certainty  pleased  us  because  we  were  that  kind 
of  an  ass;  we  affected  an  attitude  with  regard 
to  money.  Many  young  men  who  are  trying 
to  be  artists  of  one  sort  or  another  do  affect  an 
attitude.  They  find  something  fine  and  dash 
ing  in  spending  a  week's  salary  in  a  few  hours; 
they  will  be  half-starved  for  days;  they  con 
sider  that  rather  interesting  also.  It  sets  them 
apart  (they  think)  from  their  more  colorless 
brethren.  They  lend  and  borrow  easily;  in 
their  own  conceit  they  are  exhibiting  a  gener 
ous  scorn  of  material  things,  rebuking  the  gross 
earth,  establishing  kinship  with  the  more  ethe 
real  element. 

255 


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But  money  is  life.  Not  material  life  only. 
It  touches  the  soul.  Who  steals  our  purse 
steals  not  trash,  but  our  blood,  time,  muscle, 
nervous  force,  our  power  to  help  others,  our 
future  possibility  of  turning  out  creditable 
work. 

He  may  even  steal  our  good  name;  there  are 
not  wanting  instances  where  innocent  men 
might  have  cleared  themselves  if  they  had  had 
the  money  or  the  credit  to  command  events. 

Men  are  dying  in  bitterness  and  in  the 
shadow  of  disgrace  for  want  of  a  little  gold. 
If  a  thief  robs  us  we  may  be  able  to  under 
stand  why  he  does  it,  but  smite  him  we  will  not 
forbear  to  do  for  all  of  that.  He  has  aimed 
a  dagger  at  our  heart  and  swung  a  bludgeon  at 
our  head;  he  strikes  at  our  life  who  grasps  at 
our  dollars;  it  is  our  blood  or  his. 

But  we  don't  think  we  would  imprison  the 
thief.  Even  crooked  bankers  and  all  others 
who  pick  the  pockets  of  the  poor,  turning  the 
bodies  and  souls,  the  blood  and  hopes  of  their 
thousands  of  struggling  victims  into  gold — even 
them  we  would  not  have  imprisoned.  They 
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should  be  beheaded  or  shot.  Not  hanged,  nor 
killed  by  electricity.  Hanging  is  too  often  done 
by  bungling  stranglers.  And  when  a  man  is 
killed  by  electricity — what  doctor  surely  knows 
that  there  are  not  some  moments  of  intense 
agony  between  the  initial  shock  and  death,  dur 
ing  which  the  being  is  submerged  in  a  bath  of 
flame?  None  of  the  doctors  who  deny  this  has 
ever  been  killed  by  electricity.  But  beheading 
is  instant  death.  The  French  have  preserved 
the  truly  civilized  feeling  about  this  matter.  If 
it  is  determined  that  a  man  should  die,  that  man 
is  already  dead;  he  has  acquired  a  certain  dig 
nity  through  his  death;  it  is  a  ghastly  impro 
priety  to  risk  letting  him  suffer  any  more  than 
is  necessary;  he  has  a  right  to  depart  quickly 
and  painlessly — to  depart  tragically,  with  none 
of  the  writhings  of  mere  melodrama. 

It  is  possible  that  it  is  not  right  to  kill  people 
at  all;  that  view  has  been  held  sincerely  for  a 
long  time  by  many  people.  But  if  any  deserves 
death  it  is  certainly  the  thief  on  a  large  scale 
who  ruins  so  many  lives.  When  he  loots  a 
bank  men  who  have  saved  and  struggled  for 
257 


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years  give  up  hope,  growing  children  lose  the 
chance  for  education;  this,  that  or  the  other 
girl  may  be  forced  into*  prostitution;  youths 
who  have  been  striving  and  suffering  and  over 
working  against  the  time  when  they  might 
learn  a  profession  or  an  art  or  a  business  are 
flung  back  into  the  slums;  talent  is  crushed; 
maybe,  now  and  then,  even  genius  is  blasted. 
The  hand  of  the  thief  reaches  into  the  in 
wards  of  society  and  filches  the  stuff  of  life. 
The  future  is  impoverished  of  the  soul  that 
would  have  come  to  bloom. 

The  essential  sin  of  the  thief  is  that  he  can 
not  rob  humanity  without  robbing  God;  these 
worlds,  these  stars  on  which  we  dwell,  need 
more  life  of  a  better  quality;  great  men  -help 
God  create;  a  thief  is  a  rat  in  the  granary 
which  holds  the  seeds  of  heaven;  money,  prop 
erly  come  by  and  properly  used,  is  a  sacred 
thing.  An  honest  financier,  who  really  serves 
the  world,  may  be  something  of  a  priest. 

The  serious  artist,  if  he  is  to  commune  with 
Heaven,  must,  above  all  men,  have  leisure  here 
on  earth.  And  leisure,  that  is  money.  The 
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priest,  the  prophet,  must  have  leisure.  He 
must  have  freedom.  He  must  have  time  for 
reflection.  Christ  told  a  certain  rich  young 
man:  uSell  all  thou  hast  and  follow  me."  He 
meant,  follow  me  into  freedom,  into,  leisure, 
into  immortality,  away  from  your  worldly  pre 
occupation,  from  the  worries  that  clutter  up 
your  life. 

Christ  and  His  disciples  found  freedom,  lei 
sure,  time  for  reflection,  by  avoiding  manual 
labor  and  depending  on  their  friends  for  physi 
cal  support.  But  some  one  did  the  work  on 
which  they  lived;  those  friends  were  in  a  finan 
cial  position  to  help  along  a  little;  Christ  did 
not  scorn  money  honestly  come  by;  He  used 
it;  He  lived  for  months  on  the  thrift  of  those 
friends;  their  thrift,  their  money,  helped  that 
rare  soul  to  show  Heaven  to  Earth;  with  di 
vine  assurance  He  marched  forward,  confident 
that  whatever  of  the  material  world  He  needed 
would  be  forthcoming;  that  the  stuff  of  life 
which  He  required  lay  in  store  for  him. 

But  we  have  no  such  assurance;  we  have  no 
miracle  of  loaves  and  fishes  to  fall  back  upon; 
259 


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we  are  not  divine  vagabonds;  we  have  nothing 
but  our  human  thrift.  We  cannot  get  leisure 
to  think  or  write  or  paint  or  worship  by  turn 
ing  actual  vagrants;  the  real  vagrant  to-day  is 
extremely  unromantic  and  excessively  harassed. 
We  have  no  regal  presence  to  command  food, 
shelter  and  time. 

Therefore,  coin  must  be  ours. 

Money  is  a  spiritual  thing.  Ass  that  we  were 
— who  used  to  pride  ourself  secretly  on  a  cer 
tain  loose  attitude  toward  our  check  book! 
What  good,  we  would  like  to  know,  did  draw 
poker  or  poetry  ever  do  us?  If  we  had  let 
poker  and  poetry  alone  in  our  youth  we  might 
now  have  the  leisure  to  sit  down  and  write  a 
book  instead  of  merely  writing  a  preface.  We 
think  it  might  have  turned  into  a  book  of  ser 


mons. 


Preface  to  the  Autobiography 

of  an  Old-Fashioned 

Anarchist 


Preface  to  the  Autobiography  of  an 
Old-Fashioned  Anarchist 

THE  person  to  whose  memoirs  this  note  is  a 
preface  was  a  benign  and  fatherly  being. 

He  had  a  great  tenderness  for  all  humanity. 

"When  I  was  a  young  man,  at  the  outset  of 
my  career,"  he  sometimes  said,  "I  used  to  think 
with  regret  of  the  many  Innocent  Bystanders 
-endangered,  and  often  killed,  in  the  dynamiting 
I  was  engaged  in  for  the  advancement  of  the 
Cause.  But  as  I  grow  older  and  observe  more 
of  the  world's  injustice  I  have  come  to  a  dif 
ferent  way  of  thinking.  Is  it  not  a  kindness 
to  any  man  to  remove  him  from  this  life?  If 
he  is  really  innocent,  if  he  is  as  yet  uncon- 
taminated  by  his  mundane  environment,  the 
greater  is  the  service  I  do  him,  the  more  disil 
lusionment  and  suffering  and  despair  I  save 
him  from.  When  I  weep  now  it  is  for  those 
who  still  live,  for  those  beyond  the  reach  of 

263 


Prefaces 


my  activities,  rather  than  for  those  who  have 
been  suddenly  and  mercifully  launched  upon 
eternity.  Do  you  think  that  I  myself  would 
have  consented  to  live  for  eighty-seven  years 
had  it  not  been  for  the  consciousness  of  my 
Mission  in  the  World?" 

This  point  of  view  indicates,  I  think,  a  na 
ture  truly  and  profoundly  religious;  it  shows 
the  sacrificial  spirit.  The  Professor — his 
friends  called  him  the  Professor — felt  that 
death  was  best  for  all  men,  himself  included. 
But  in  spite  of  this  wish  to  die  he  was  willing 
to  keep  on  living  that  he  might  bring  death  to 
others.  He  did  not  consult  his  own  desires, 
he  was  guided  by  a  higher  thought,  giving  free 
ly  to  his  fellow  men  the  boon  of  destruction 
which  he  denied  to  himself;  he  subdued  his  pri 
vate  inclination  and  did  what  he  conceived  to 
be  his  public  duty  sternly  to  the  end,  carefully 
avoiding  the  police  and  escaping  the  legal  pen 
alty  for  what  the  world  would  call  his  crimes. 

I  say  sternly;  and  stern  he  was  in  a  sense; 
his  moral  parts  were  assembled  about  a  stiff 
spine  of  austerity.  But  there  was  no  vain  ex- 
£64 


Preface  to  Old-Fashioned  Anarchist 

ternal  parade  of  this  quality;  it  was  his  sweet 
ness  that  one  perceived  first  and  remembered 
longest.  He  even  had  a  certain  gentle  whim 
sicality  of  manner,  knowing  well  that  a  sour 
aspect  and  a  frowning  habii  are  no  essentials 
of  true  spiritual  dignity,  but  may  often  accom 
pany  the  reverse.  Indeed,  on  the  strong  rock 
or  this  nature  there' grew  and  flourished  many 
green  and  floral  traits.  It  was,  for  instance, 
his  pleasantly  eccentric  custom,  when  he  had 
achieved  what  our  society  calls  an  atrocity,  to 
write  a  comic  song  about  it  (commonly  in  the 
early  ballad  -style)  and  chant  it,  to  his  own 
accompaniment  on  the  piano,  at  some  jolly 
party  of  his  intimates. 

Young  men  especially  loved  him;  and,  while 
he  was  guide  and  inspirer  to  their  develop 
ing  minds,  he  was  fond  of  companioning  them 
in  many  of  their  genial  pranks  and  lively  vices. 
Simplicity  and  integrity  were  the  foundations 
of  his  character,  but  he  also  had  his  subtleties 
and  his  flashes  of  psychic  insight;  one  day  he 
emerged  from  a  half  trance  of  introspection 
with  this  remark:  "Vice  is  necessary  to  an 


Prefaces 


Idealist,  otherwise  he  would  soar  too  far  above 
the  world  to  which  he  bears  his  message;  he 
would  lose  touch  with  it  and  understanding  of 
it.  I  must  go  in  more  for  Vice!" 

And  he  did,  resolutely  and  on  principle.  At 
first  he  did  not  like  it;  later,  he  confessed,  he 
loved  it  for  its  own  sake.  "Thus,"  he  com 
mented,  with  his  winsome  smile,  combing  his 
long  white  beard  with  his  nervous  fingers,  "thus 
does  Duty  reward  those  who  are  steadfast  by 
becoming  Pleasure!" 

It  is  melancholy  to  have  to  record  that  a 
being  so  pure  and  unselfish  died  of  a  broken 
heart.  But  that  is  the  world's  way!  He  had 
grown  old  and  feeble,  and  white-headed  in  the 
service  of  Anarchy — and  in  the  end  Anarchy 
pushed  him  aside! 

It  was  over  a  purely  technical  matter  that 
he  quarreled  with  his  immediate  superiors  in 
the  organization,  but  if  the  break  had  not  come 
about  in  one  way  it  would  have  come  about  in 
another:  The  Professoi  held  by  the  received 
traditions  of  Anarchy;  he  believed  in  a  steady 
and  sane  advance  along  the  road  determined 
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in  the  past  by  the  fathers  of  the  cause.  He 
was  a  classicist,  a  conservative — an  academi 
cian,  as  it  were;  he  abhorred  anything  radical; 
the  linked  historical  continuity  of  deed  and  deed 
was  his  ideal.  I  fear  he  was  a  trifle  pedantic, 
as  so  many  virtuous  and  sincere  men  are. 

"The  kind  of  Anarchy  that  was  good  enough 
for  my  grandsire  is  good  enough  for  me!'*  he 
used  to  say. 

An  ingenious  but  flighty  young  Anarchist,  a 
clever  lad  but  very  disinclined  to  recognize  au 
thority,  invented  an  Infernal  Machine  the  ex 
plosive  principle  of  which  was  not  dynamite 
and  urged  it  upon  the  Professor  at  a  meeting 
of  the  little  group  over  which  the  old  man  pre 
sided. 

It  shocked  the  Professor  to  the  soul. 

"Never,"  he  cried,  "has  anything  but  dyna 
mite  been  used  since  its  first  manufacture  And 
it  never  shall  be  used  while  I  retain  command! 
It  is  against  all  the  traditions  of  Anarchy! 
There  is  no  precedent  for  it,  young  man.  The 
proposal  is  impudent,  subversive,  revolution 
ary!" 

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He  was,  I  believe,  called  an  obstructionist; 
but  the  old  man  made  a  bitter  fight.  He  was 
finally  thrown  out  of  the  organization,  by 
younger  men  in  control,  as  insubordinate,  obe 
dience  to  law  and  discipline  being  one  of  the 
essentials  of  practical  Anarchy.  Or  so  I  gather 
from  the  old  man's  book,  to  which  I  must  refer 
you  for  the  details  of  his  struggle  against  the 
youthful  leaders  with  their  new  ideas,  for  the 
story  of  his  defeat  and  for  the  melancholy  cry 
from  his  heart  with  which  his  volume  concludes. 

I  can  never  read  it  without  tears. 


Preface  to  an  Unpublished 
Volume 


Preface  to  an  Unpublished  Volume  / 

SOME  fifteen  years  ago,  when  we  were  work 
ing  for  a  paper  down  South,  it  was  our  habit 
to  produce  at  least  three  poems  a  day.  And 
what  wonderful  poems  they  were!  All  about 
the  old  gods,  and  love,  and  .  .  .  and  all  that 
sort  of  thing. 

We  can  praise  them,  and  there  is  no  one  to 
contradict  us,  for  none  of  them  was  ever  printed, 
and  none  of  them  ever  will  be.  We  believed 
in  them,  at  the  time,  more  than  we  have  ever 
been  able  to  believe  in  anything  since  .  .  .  noth 
ing  conies  up  to  those  verses  of  ours  that  arc 
gone  forever. 

We  had  a  large  wooden  box  under  our  desk 
that  would  hold,  we  should  say,  between  two 
and  three  bushels  of  poetry.  When  we  finished 
a  poem  we  dropped  it  into  the  box.  For  three 
long  golden  years  we  threw  poems  into  that 
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box,  stamping  them  down  from  time  to  time, 
and  there  must  have  been  a  thousand  poems 
there  ...  all  about  love  and  the  old  gods  and 
the  red  morning  of  the  world  and  the  sudden 
ghosts  that  go  whizzing  through  the  moon 
light.  It  was  our  intention  when  the  box  got 
so  full  that  we  could  not  trample  another  poem 
into  it  to  dig  them  all  out,  choose  a  couple  of 
hundred  of  the  best  ones,  publish  them,  and  in 
stantly  become  famous.  So,  being  absolutely 
sure  that  these  were  wonderful  poems,  we 
bided  our  time  .  .  .  we  wrote,  we  gloated  over 
them,  we  held  them  back  from  print,  we 
dreamed  of  immortality  and  we  bided  our 
tkne.  How  we  would  sit  and  look  at  that  box 
and  worship  those  poems ! 

The  newspaper  which  employed  us  employed 
also  a  negro  janitor  named  Henry,  a  genial 
savage  with  the  scars  of  razor  slashings  all 
over  his  neck  and  face,  and  a-  genuine  taste  for 
Shakespearian  rhetoric,  who  well  understood 
that  the  box  beneath  our  desk  contained  works 
of  art  and  not  waste  paper.  Henry  had  once 
worked  in  some  theater  in  Memphis;  he  had 


Preface  to  an  Unpublished  Volume 

soaked  in  hundreds  of  lines  of  Shakespeare, 
which  he  would  deliver  for  us  on  very  slender 
encouragement.  And  he  understood  them,  too 
.  .  .  especially  well  did  he  understand  lines  that 
promised  bloodshed  or  lines  that  were  heavy 
with  odor,  or  gaudily  colored.  For  a  dime  he 
would  opine  that  the  poems  in  the  box  under 
our  desk  were  likely  as  good  as  Shakespeare; 
for  a  quarter  they  were  probably  better.  And 
this  was  evidence  of  a  kindly  nature  in  Henry, 
as  we  never  read  any  of  the  poems  to  him. 
That  would  have  been  beneath  our  dignity. 
We  were  dignified,  then;  we  cultivated  dignity 
consciously — for  were  we  not  about  to  appear 
before  the  world  as  a  poet?  We  practiced  the 
mental  gesture,  and  secretly  we  rehearsed  a 
number  of  physical  poses  as  well.  We  went 
so  far  as  to  wonder  whether  to  have  our  pic 
ture  taken  with  some  kind  of  a  shawl-damn- 
thing  about  our  shoulders  .  .  . 

You  see,  we  believed  in  those  poems  in  that 
box.     There   were  a  thousand  of  them  .  .  ." 
all  about  love  and  starlight  and  young  gods  ram 
paging  across  the  young  umbrageous  worlds. 
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And  Spring.  Those  poems !  Nobody  will  ever 
read  them,  now.  Henry  came  nearer  to  hear 
ing  them  than  any  one  else  .  .  .  perhaps  Hen 
ry  used  to  sneak  in  at  night  and  read  them. 
But  we  will  never  get  any  of  them  back  by 
combing  Henry's  memory.  For  Henry,  by  this 
time,  must  have  been  lynched  or  legally  hanged 
or  finally  and  fatally  razored  at  some  convict's 
coming-out  party.  Henry  was  what  is  known 
in  some  parts  of  the  South  as  a  "bad  nigger"; 
he  had  the  soul  of  an  artist,  but  he  was  not  a 
peaceful  citizen;  he  should  have  lived  in  Renais 
sance  times  as  the  body  servant  of  Benvenuto 
Cellini. 

Henry  knew  those  were  poems,  and  not 
waste  paper,  in  that  box.  But  Henry  quit,  or 
was  fired,  one  Saturday  night,  unbeknown  to 
us,  and  a  negro  named  George  took  his  place. 
A  new  janitor  sweeps  clean.  Before  we  ever 
heard  of  George,  before  we  had  an  opportu 
nity  to  lead  him  to  that  box  of  poetry  and  bump 
his  Guinea  skull  against  it  and  impress  him 
with  its  sacred  character,  George  had  carried 
it  away.  .  .  .  He  thought  it  was  waste  paper. 
274 


Preface  to  an  Unpublished  Volume 

It  was  our  future  ...  it  is  our  past  .  .  . 
it  was  what  we  were  born  to  create  and  we  have 
never  done  anything  since — oh!  well,  if  you 
coax  us,  a  thing  or  two.  But  nothing  like  Those 
Poems.  Few  have — by  Heaven!  we  swear  it! 
There  were  only  two  things  that  could  have 
happened  to  those  poems:  either  they  should 
have  been  published,  and  we  should  have  died 
of  consumption  on  their  publication,  or  ... 
or,  what  happened.  The  poems  perished.  We 
live — if  you  choose  to  call  it  life,  this  existence 
since,  knowing  that  we  wrote  those  poems  and 
knowing  that  we  will  never  again  write  any 
thing  like  them.  For  us  to  have  lived  on  after 
the  poems  died,  dwindling  from  year  to  year, 
is  the  more  tragic,  because  there  is  about  the 
whole  thing  an  element  of  the  comic,  too.  And 
how  pathetic  that  we  should  have  become  suf 
ficiently  reconciled  to  the  comedy  so  that  we 
can  actually  discuss  it !  We  have  never  really 
given  a  good-goddam  for  anybody's  poetry 
since,  not  even  our  own.  It  put  a  crimp  into 
us.  To  have  been  a  Milton — not  mute  and 
inglorious,  but  vocal  and  glorious — at  least  a 
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Prefaces 


beginning  Milton — and  then  to  become  a 
column  conductor !  To  be  finished  by  a  Guinea 
negro  named  George  with  a  skull  like  a  piece 
of  granite — a  gargoyle  leaping  up  to  butt  the 
viscera  out  of  a  seraph !  For  those  were  good 
poems  .  .  .  they  were  all  about  love  and  what 
the  graves  say  to  one  another  at  midnight  and 
about  the  waters  before  the  face  of  God  was  on 
the  waters. 

All  the  waste  paper  in  that  place  was  custom 
arily  taken  to  the  basement  and  tied  into  im 
mense  bales  and  shipped  back  to  the  paper 
mills.  We  gutted  a  dozen  of  those  bales,  han 
dling  every  scrap  ourself,  but  we  never  found  as 
much  as  one  slender  little  blonde-haired  sonnet. 

Well  .  .  .  well  ...  it  is  something  to  look 
back  on!  It  is  something  to  brag  about!  We 
all  need  that  as  we  grow  older.  When  most 
people  boast  about  what  they  did  or  were  fif 
teen  years  ago,  a  fact  is  likely  to  pop  up  and 
confute  them — but  we  shall  go  on  believing  in 
those  poems  and  sighing  over  them  and  idoliz 
ing  them  and  not  a  soul  on  earth  can  spring 
276 


Preface  to  an  Unpublished  Volume 

one  of  them  on  us  and  prove  how  rotten  they 
were — that  is,  unless  Henry  read  them  and  is 
not  yet  hanged.  Heard  melodies,  as  Keats 
says,  are  sweet,  but  those  unheard  .  .  . 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Prefaces 


Preface  to  a  Book  of  Prefaces 

HAVING  written  so  many  Prefaces,  without 
producing  any  of  the  Books,  it  seems,  on  the 
whole,  better  to  put  forth  this  Book  without 
any  Preface.  It  is  not  exactly  the  Book  we  in 
tended  it  should  be,  anyhow.  But  Books  never 
are.  The  next  Book  we  write,  we  intend  shall 
be  a  Volume  with  a  Moral  Purpose.  That  is 
our  present  intention  .  .  .  but  it  may  turn  out 
to  be  a  Volume  with  a  Moral  Porpoise.  Things 
of  that  sort  happen  to  us. 

(2) 


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